The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced Friday, March 22, that it will conduct its next Monetary Board policy meeting on April 8 instead of April 4.
According to BSP’s public relations’ group, the “official” reason why they decided to re-schedule is that the “Monetary Board wanted to wait for the release of the March CPI (consumer price index) data which comes out on April 5, together with other data.”
The April 8 policy meeting will be the BSP’s second meeting for the year.
The central bank currently has a hold policy stance and has not changed its 6.5 percent target reverse repurchase rate which is the policy rate since Oct. 26, 2023.
The first BSP policy meeting for 2024 was held last Feb. 15 where the Monetary Board decided to keep its 6.5 percent rate because risks to inflation have diminished while prospects for domestic activity remains intact.
The BSP also announced lower risk-adjusted inflation forecasts for 2024 and 2025 last month which are within the government target of two percent to four percent. For this year, the Monetary Board approved a risk-adjusted inflation forecast of 3.9 percent, down from 4.2 percent during the previous policy meeting on Dec. 14, 2023.
For 2025, the risk-adjusted inflation forecast is 3.5 percent, slightly lower than the previous 3.4 percent estimate.
Meanwhile, most economists and market analysts anticipate the BSP will reduce its key rate in the second half of 2024, along with a similar decision by the US Federal Reserve to cut its own rates.