Zambia’s central bank lowered its \u200bmain interest rate on Wednesday, saying it saw \u200cinflation staying within its target range despite risks associated with the Iran war.<\/p>\n
The Bank of Zambia lowered its Monetary Policy Rate by \u200b25 basis points to 13.25%, whereas economists polled \u200bby Reuters had predicted that interest rates would \u2060remain unchanged.<\/p>\n
“In arriving at this decision, the (bank) took into \u200baccount … the expected favourable maize harvest during the current crop \u200bmarketing season (and) the observed relative stability in the exchange rate of the kwacha,” Governor Denny Kalyalya told a press conference.<\/p>\n
It was the \u200bthird consecutive rate cut, though it was smaller than\u00a0February’s \u200b75-basis-point reduction.<\/p>\n
Inflation has slowed for four months in a row. It stood \u200cat \u20606.8% year on year\u00a0in April, down from 7.1% the previous month and within the bank’s 6%-8% target range.<\/p>\n
Kalyalya said that while inflation was projected to remain in the \u200btarget band, \u200buncertainty and \u2060upside risks linked to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran meant a cautious policy rate adjustment \u200bwas appropriate.<\/p>\n
The copper-rich Southern African country\u00a0suspended\u00a0some \u200bfuel \u2060taxes for three months from April to try to mitigate the impact of rising global energy prices on households and \u2060businesses.<\/p>\n
The \u200bcentral bank now sees inflation averaging \u200b6.8% in 2026 and 6.1% in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zambia’s central bank lowered its \u200bmain interest rate on Wednesday, saying it saw \u200cinflation staying within its target range despite risks associated with the Iran war. The Bank of Zambia lowered its Monetary Policy Rate by \u200b25 basis points to 13.25%, whereas economists polled \u200bby Reuters had predicted that interest rates would \u2060remain unchanged. “In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,30],"tags":[5144,394],"class_list":["post-20864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-southern-africa","tag-bank-of-zambia","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20866,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20864\/revisions\/20866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}