The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) will in February commence its first meeting for 2015.
The meeting will start on February 16th and end on 18th of February.
The meeting will end with a press conference which will be addressed by the Governor of the Bank Of Ghana Dr Henry Kofi Wampah to announce the decision of the MPC on the appropriate positioning of the Bank’s policy rate.
[contextly_sidebar id=”Nqbu3oLBiMa6yQGn0syBnEvlOHeTaeNL”]The last time the bank announced a policy rate was in November, 2014 in where the committee pegged the rate at 21%.
This is the highest rate since December, 2003 when the rate was at 21.50 percent.
The policy rate which is used by commercial banks to calculate their base rates was at 19 percent prior to the increment.
Industry players reacting to the increment at the time said they feared the latest hike will lead to an increase in interest rates which hover around 35 percent on the average.
But Governor of the Bank of Ghana Dr Henry Kofi Wampah said the increment will help tame inflation which at the time stood at 16.9 percent, the highest since March, 2010 and also to ensure that the existing tight monetary policy stance is maintained while still operating within the corridor set by the committee.
According to him ‘the committee is concerned about the outward shift in the medium term inflation path relative to the previous forecast’. ‘The latest forecast shows inflation will continue to remain outside the target band but will ease towards the medium term target of 8.0 percent which we hope to achieve towards the first half of 2016.′
Next month’s meeting which will be the 63rd meeting will also review developments in the economy.
It is also expected that the committee will also discuss the performance of the cedi which recovered from its free fall late last year (2014) after declining by about thirty percent in the first three quarters of that year.
The cedi’s performance dominated the meetings last year.
By: Vivian Kai Mensah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
