SBP Governor Ashraf Wathra in the monetary policy for the next two months announced to keep the interest rate unchanged at six percent.

Central bank revises benchmark interest rates regularly to ensure price stability and to help government achieve economic growth targets.

Recently released statistics revealed that CPI inflation for March-2016 clocked in at 3.94 percent year to year and Feb-2016 reading of 4.0 percent which is in line with expectations of 4 percent.

While, the country’s foreign exchange reserves stood at $20.8 billion. In addition, current account deficit is lower than previous year and posted a $157 million surplus in February 2016.

Analysts said that with lower inflation, sufficient foreign exchange reserves and positive outlook for external account, there was space for a rate cut in the key policy rate in the new monetary policy, however, the central bank has adopted a vigilant approach and kept the discount rate unchanged.

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