2024-03-24 20:49:32
Central banks are facing growing political pressure to cut interest rates, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva wrote on the institution’s official blog.
Georgieva’s announcement comes in a key week for monetary policy, which began with the Bank of Japan’s historic decision to eliminate negative interest rates.
According to Kristalina Georgieva, “calls to cut interest rates are growing, even prematurely, and they are likely to intensify as half the world’s population votes this year”.
Last night the Federal Reserve in the USA left unchanged its key interest rates in the range of 5.25 – 5.50% – a level at which they have been since July last year. However, its governor, Jerome Powell, expressed his determination to cut interest rates before the end of this year.
In London, the Central Bank left interest rates unchanged. The Swiss central bank surprisingly cut them by 25 basis points to 1.5%, thus becoming the first major bank to abandon tighter monetary policy, writes Nova.
In Turkey, where before the re-election of Recep Erdogan as president, the Central Bank “struggled” with inflation with low interest rates, and after the start of his new mandate reversed the course of the interest rate policy, it reached a growth of 5 percentage points to 50% – a decision, justified by inflation, which is close to 70 percent.
In Poland, central banker Adam Glapinski is facing legal action because Donald Tusk’s government says he misled the finance ministry ahead of a parliamentary vote with a bond-buying program to stimulate the economy.