State Bank to announce Monetary Policy today

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will announce its Monetary Policy to set interest rate for next two months on Monday (Today), ARY News reported.

“The monetary policy committee (MPC) of the central bank will meet today at SBP Karachi to decide about Monetary Policy and it will issue the Monetary Policy Statement through a press release on the same day,” a statement earlier said.

The experts are expecting the interest rate likely to be fixed slightly downward with most of them predicting that the central bank will opt to reduce the rate by 25 basis points.

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has rebased its Consumer Price Index (CPI). The change in the base year reduced CPI by 1.13 percent YoY in Aug’19. The change in base year of the CPI by the PBS expected to set the inflation rate at 9.6 percent.

In the previous meeting on 16th July 2019, the Monetary Policy Committee had raised the policy rate by 100 basis points (bps) to 13.25 percent on higher inflation outlook.

Governor State Bank of Pakistan Dr Reza Baqir while announcing the monetary policy in July had announced 100 basis points hike in the interest rate, which reached to 13.25 percent.

He said, the decision made due to increasing inflationary trend and devaluation of the rupee.