BoG to stick to 28% policy rate – Bloomberg
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the Bank of Ghana’s MPC to stick to its 28% monetary policy rate in the upcoming monetary policy rate announcement on Monday, March 27, 2023.
This is after the Central Bank lifted the benchmark interest rate by a combined 14.5 percentage points since November 2021, coupled with a declining inflation rate.
Ghana’s currency, which whipsawed in 2022 over concern about its ballooning debt load and then optimism about a provisional International Monetary Fund bailout, has been relatively steady this year, helping to keep inflation in check.
The inflation rate has declined for two straight months and may fall more sharply to below 40% by April due to base effects, said Mark Bohlund, a senior credit research analyst at REDD Intelligence.
But many experts in the country believe that a further tightening of the Monetary Policy Rate could help to increase the rate of decline in inflation and solidify the progress that has already been made.
According to the latest data, inflation rates in February 2023 recorded a marginal decline of 80 basis points, sustaining the reversal in the upward trend recorded in most parts of 2022. This decline was primarily driven by the food group, which recorded a year-on-year inflation rate of 59.1%, a decrease of 190 bps from the previous month.
