The South African Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee will announce its repo-rate decision on Thursday. Most economists expect the five member committee to keep rates unchanged.
Lower economic growth and inflation that is comfortably within the Bank’s 3%-6% target band are among some of the reasons that could prompt the bank to take an unchanged monetary policy stance.
Standard Chartered economist Razia Khan says, “The market broadly expects the SARB to remain on hold, a lot of the interest, however, is going to be on how the SARB forecast is going to change. There are many who have been arguing that it should be a more dovish stand.”
Khan adds: “The SARB itself has emphasized the needs to keep inflation expectations managed, but it is looking to achieve inflation of around 4.5% on a consistence basis and a lot will depend on how soon they expect to growth to bounce back.”
