Canada maintains 4.5% interest rate, What's next?
The Bank of Canada will reveal its decision on the benchmark interest rate it will use going forward. Even if the economy performs better than projected, most economists believe the central bank will maintain its key interest rate at 4.5 percent. The economy started the year strong, even with interest rates at a record high, and unemployment around record lows.
The Bank of Canada has stated that it would like to see an additional economic slowing in order to return annual inflation to its objective of 2%. For the second month in a row, February’s inflation rate of 5.2% was lower than expected. Today’s monetary policy report will also include the Fed’s most recent growth and inflation forecasts. The prime interest rate has increased dramatically during the past year, from near zero to its highest level since 2007. The Bank of Canada issued its eighth straight rate increase in January and said that it plans to keep its key interest rate unchanged if economic growth continues in line with its projections.
Most economists believe the Bank of Canada will keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged on Wednesday, arguing that further rate hikes would come too soon. The central bank’s goal of dampening economic activity has been aided by the general trend of the economy. “There really were no significant surprises here,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO. The Federal Reserve in the United States has recently indicated that it intends to continue raising interest rates. Still, the Bank of Canada’s policy is beginning to diverge from that of the Fed. Stephen Gordon, an economics professor at Laval University, argued that the United States’ monetary policy does have consequences in Canada. The Canadian dollar may weaken and import costs may rise if investors decide to move their money to the United States in response to higher interest rates there.
“It’s not an automatic thing of,” Gordon said, “the (Bank of Canada) has to follow the Fed.” The Canadian economy stalled in the fourth quarter, and inflation dropped to 5.9% in January, according to recent figures. Although “the labor market remains very tight,” the central bank stated conditions should improve and wage growth should slow. Suppose the 150,000 jobs added in January were a one-time occurrence or a sign of underlying strength in the labor market. In that case, we should learn more from the February labor force survey, which will be released on Friday, according to Porter.
The Bank of Canada maintains its forecast that annual inflation in Canada will decline to around 3% by the middle of the year. There will need to be a “surprise” for the Bank of Canada to act again in the form of an interest rate hike, according to Gordon. Inflation in Canada is predicted to remain low this year due to base year effects, barring any unforeseen developments. The influence of price changes from the previous year on the determination of the annual inflation rate is referred to as the base-year effect. Price increases accelerated in the first half of 2022 as fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine materialized, but analysts anticipate that the annual inflation rate will continue to decline in the coming months. The rate of inflation is currently declining, as Gordon has stated. Further time is required for the economy to react to past interest rate hikes, which can take as long as two years.
The Bank of Canada reports that international economic growth is trending roughly as predicted. However, it noted that “upside risks” that could increase inflation include the robustness of China’s economic recovery and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine. In the future, Porter predicts that the Bank of Canada will have “limits” in its ability to diverge from the Federal Reserve. Because of their interconnected economies and shared stresses, he continued, both countries would benefit from higher interest rates.
“If the U.S. economy is really showing more underlying strength and greater inflation pressures, those will probably get reflected eventually in Canada as well,” he added. The Bank of Canada is scheduled to release its next interest rate decision and quarterly monetary policy report on April 12.