Adding to the woes of the consumers, the banks today ruled out any further increase in deposit rates in the near future even though high inflation was eroding the return on deposits. This news becomes more worrisome as the inflation stands at a 13 year high of 11.63 percent.

Confirming this news, Indian Bank's Chairman and Managing Director M S Sundara Rajan said, "Banks have already responded to the RBI cues by hiking their rates. There is no room for a further hike.”

Inflation has continuously risen in the past one month, despite RBI and banks’ efforts. It had touched a 13-year high of 11.42 per cent in the first week of June and then reached 11.63 per cent for the week-ended June 21. This leads to the RBI hiking the repo rate and CRR.

Following a hike in both short-term lending rate (repo) and mandatory cash reserve (CRR) for banks by 50 basis points each by the Reserve Bank to control inflation, various public and private sector banks have hiked both their prime lending and deposit rates recently.

Sundara Rajan though was optimistic about the reduction in inflation rate, saying that the inflation is likely to come down in the near term. He felt that the various measures taken by the monetary and fiscal authorities would help in bringing back positive returns to depositors.

"We have to wait till the inflation ease in the following months. I'm sure that it will come down in the near term," he said.

Supporting the same view, Yes Bank's Managing Director and CEO Rana Kapoor said that it would be unlikely that banks would revise their deposit rates another time. He feels such an action would further affect the margins of the banks.

"I see a very less scope for banks to increase their deposit rates even as the present high inflation is giving negative returns to depositors," Kapoor said.