Chile’s Central Bank Raises Rates
Source: http://chileeconomy.blogspot.com/2008/01/chiles-central-bank-raises-rates.htmlPosted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 | In Chile, Market Commentary
Chile’s central bank raised its benchmark lending rate to the highest in six years as it seeks to curb the fastest inflation in a decade. Policy makers raised the benchmark rate a quarter point to 6.25 percent in a meeting yesterday.The bank acted in response to inflation that climbed to an annual rate of 7.8 percent in December, driven by higher costs for food and transportation. The question is, with the US Fed set to lower rates rapidly, will this move curb inflation, or attract funds which can only serve to accelerate it. With the Peso set to rise, dollar denominated loans are going to look increasingly attractive to Chilean clients.
It was the second consecutive monthly increase as the bank tries to bring inflation down to its target for two years from now: 3 percent plus or minus 1 percentage point. The bank’s overnight lending rate has risen from a low of 1.75 percent in the first eight months of 2004.
December’s inflation was a “significant surprise,” the central bank said after the meeting. “Further additional adjustments may be necessary to guarantee that inflation converges with the target rate.”
The Chilean peso rose to its highest level versus the dollar since 1999 today on expectations the central bank would lift rates while the U.S. Federal Open Markets Committee cuts.
Chile’s economy grew 4.6 percent in November from a year earlier. It is the only Latin American country to have closed its income gap with the U.S. since 1990, as surging demand for the country’s exports has stoked expansion, Finance Minister Andres Velasco told El Diario Financiero last week.
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Andres Velasco, Bank, Central Bank Raises Rates Chile, Chile, Chile, food, Market Commentary, U.S. Federal Open Markets Committee, United States, US Fed
 About Edward Hugh (http://globaleconomydoesmatter.blogspot.com)
Edward Hugh is a macro economist, who specializes in growth and productivity theory, demographic processes and their impact on macro performance, and the underlying dynamics of migration flows. Hugh is a founding member and regular contributor to a number of economics weblogs, including Global Economy Matters, Demography Matters and a number of others. Edward 'the bonobo' Hugh is a Catalan economist of British extraction based in Barcelona. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again". He is currently working on a book with the provisional working title "Population, the Ultimate Non-renewable Resource". Edward also writes regularly for the demography blog Demography Matters. He also contributes to the Indian Economy blog . His personal weblog is Bonobo Land . Edward's website can be found at EdwardHugh.net. Edward follows in detail the Indian, Italian, Spanish, German and Japanese economies. He also has a more than a passing interest in the economies of Turkey and Brazil and in the emerging economies of Eastern Europe. |
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