By www.CentralBankNews.info
Last week in global monetary policy three central banks cut rates with Mexico once again taking markets by surprise while Sierra Leone and the West African Central Bank also cut rates. Meanwhile, Uganda raised its rate and 10 other central banks maintained their rates.
The Bank of Mexico’s second rate cut of the year comes against a backdrop of pressure on the currencies of most emerging markets from capital outflows ahead of an expected turning point in U.S. monetary policy, either later this month or in a few months.
Although Mexico’s peso started to weaken in May, along with other emerging market currencies, the depreciation has been much less than what has been experienced by India, Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia, illustrating that global investors are differentiating between the underlying economic fundamentals of emerging markets.
Through the first 36 weeks of this year, central banks have cut rates 85 times, or 24.6 percent, of the 345 policy decisions that have been taken by the 90 central banks followed by Central Bank News, marginally down from 24.7 percent the previous week.
Central banks have raised policy rates 18 times, or 5.2 percent of this year’s policy decisions, up from 5.1 percent the previous week and 4.7 percent two weeks ago, illustrating that the trend in global monetary policy is slowly but surely moving away from lower rates.
The major emerging markets of Brazil and Indonesia account for seven of this year’s 18 rate rises, Denmark for one rate rise and central banks in frontier and other markets for the remaining.
Following are the headlines and the link to last week’s 14 stories about monetary policy decisions to give readers a quick recap of events during week 36:
LAST WEEK’S (WEEK 36) MONETARY POLICY DECISIONS:
| COUNTRY | MSCI | NEW RATE | OLD RATE | 1 YEAR AGO |
| AUSTRALIA | DM | 2.50% | 2.50% | 3.50% |
| KENYA | | 8.50% | 8.50% | 13.00% |
| SIERRA LEONE | | 12.00% | 15.00% | 20.00% |
| UGANDA | | 12.00% | 11.00% | 15.00% |
| POLAND | EM | 2.50% | 2.50% | 4.75% |
| CANADA | DM | 1.00% | 1.00% | 1.00% |
| JAPAN | DM | N/A | N/A | 0.10% |
| MALAYSIA | EM | 3.00% | 3.00% | 3.00% |
| UNITED KINGDOM | DM | 0.50% | 0.50% | 0.50% |
| EUROSYSTEM | DM | 0.50% | 0.50% | 0.75% |
| SWEDEN | DM | 1.00% | 1.00% | 1.25% |
| TUNISIA | FM | 4.00% | 4.00% | 3.75% |
| W.AFRICAN STATES | | 3.50% | 3.75% | 4.00% |
| MEXICO | EM | 3.75% | 4.00% | 4.50% |
This week (week 37) 11 central banks are scheduled to hold policy meetings, including those from Mozambique, Croatia, New Zealand Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, Serbia, Latvia, Peru, Pakistan and Russia.
| COUNTRY | MSCI | DATE | RATE | 1 YEAR AGO |
| MOZAMBIQUE | | 10-Sep | 8.75% | 10.50% |
| CROATIA | FM | 11-Sep | 6.25% | 6.25% |
| NEW ZEALAND | DM | 12-Sep | 2.50% | 2.50% |
| INDONESIA | EM | 12-Sep | 7.00% | 5.75% |
| SOUTH KOREA | EM | 12-Sep | 2.50% | 3.00% |
| PHILIPPINES | EM | 12-Sep | 3.50% | 3.75% |
| SERBIA | FM | 12-Sep | 11.00% | 10.50% |
| LATVIA | | 12-Sep | 2.00% | 2.50% |
| PERU | EM | 12-Sep | 4.25% | 4.25% |
| RUSSIA | EM | 13-Sep | 8.25% | 8.25% |
| PAKISTAN | FM | 13-Sep | 9.00% | 10.50% |