Aiming to tackle inflationary pressures, the Reserve Bank today hiked the Statutory Liquidity Ratio, or the deposits that commercial banks are to park in government securities, by one percentage point, to 25 per cent. But the Reserve Bank left other key policy rates–the repo rate, the reverse repo rate, and the Cash Reserve Ratio– unchanged. Although the one percentage point hike in SLR could suck up over 30,000 crore rupees from the system, the average SLR of banks is already at 27.6 per cent. RBI Governor D. Subbarao said, releasing the second quarterly review of the Monetary Policy that the increase in SLR will, therefore, not impact the liquidity position of the banking system and credit to the private sector. The central bank retained its economic growth projection at 6 per cent, with an upward bias, for the current fiscal. But it raised its inflation estimate to 6.5 per cent, with upward bias by March-end, from 5 per cent earlier. The Reserve Bank said it will endeavour to ensure price stability and anchor inflation expectations.