The Indian equity benchmarks opened lower on Monday as indicated by the SGX index. At 9:18 am, BSE Sensex dipped 72 points or 0.13 per cent at 55,696, whereas the Nifty 50 index slipped 16 points or 0.10 per cent at 16,567, ahead of the three-day meet by the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) beginning June 6. The RBI MPC is likely to hike the key repo rates by 25 to 40 basis points (bps) in order to tame inflation. The MPC had last month, in an unscheduled meeting hiked the repo rate by 40 basis points at 4.40 per cent.