Apex industry association FICCI today asked the Reserve Bank of India to take a

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cue from the Prime Minister's instance on inflation and desist from hard monetary policy to guard against rise in interest rates.

"I think Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has laid out his roadmap that he wants growth, he wants fiscal management to be well disciplined, and I think that the RBI will pick up cues from there," new FICCI President Rajan Mittal told PTI.

Singh had said in Parliament on Friday that had the RBI and the government followed tight and harsher policies, the poor people would have been hurt more and there would have been job losses.

"Absolutely. We are saying, don't harden the monetary policy," he said when asked whether FICCI would ask the RBI not to take tough policy stance when it announces annual monetary policy next month.

On the recent hike in auto and housing loan rates by some private banks, including ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank, Mittal said its impact would be marginal and he does not expect any tightening of the monetary policy by the government for now.

Mittal said that he would tend to agree with prediction of SBI Chief O P Bhatt that banks' lending rates are unlikely to rise in the near future.

"If you look at the growth trajectory that we all are talking about... At this juncture we don't expect hardening of interest rates or tightening of the monetary policy," Mittal said.