{"id":34332,"date":"2012-12-14T09:35:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T14:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=34332"},"modified":"2012-12-14T09:35:45","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T14:35:45","slug":"pakistan-cuts-rate-50-bps-to-9-5-as-inflation-falls-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2012\/12\/14\/pakistan-cuts-rate-50-bps-to-9-5-as-inflation-falls-fast\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan cuts rate 50 bps to 9.5% as inflation falls fast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"><u>www.CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a> &nbsp; &nbsp;Pakistan&#8217;s central bank cut its policy rate by 50 basis points to 9.5 percent as inflation is falling faster than expected and should end the fiscal year below the bank&#8217;s 9.5 percent target.<br \/>&nbsp; The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), which has now cut its policy rate by 250 basis points this year, said the economy&#8217;s output gap was almost negligible while food supplies were better this year than in the previous two years, resulting in a &#8220;sharply decelerating CPI inflation.&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Pakistan&#8217;t inflation rate fell to 6.9 percent in November, a low for the year, from 7.7 percent in October, with food inflation dropping to 5.3 percent and non-food inflation at 8.1 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;This broad based deceleration in inflation is now expected to keep the average inflation for FY13 below the 9.5 percent target for the year,&#8221; the bank said in a statement after a meeting of its board of directors.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Credit extended to private businesses remains muted and is &#8220;not encouraging despite a cumulative 400 basis point reduction in the policy rate over the last 16 months,&#8221; the bank said, adding the credit outlook for the year was not encouraging despite a seasonal pick up since mid-October.<br \/><a name='more'><\/a><br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;The consistently low level of credit availed by the private sector together with declining foreign investments are the main factors responsible for a stagnant economy,&#8221; the SBP said.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; SBP&#8217;s foreign exchange reserves fell to $8.6 billion on Dec. 14 from $10.8 billion end-June and despite an external account surplus, the rupee has depreciated by 3.3 percent since the start of the fiscal 2013 year, the bank said.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp;The International Monetary Fund forecasts a 3.7 percent growth in Pakistan&#8217;s economy this year, up from 3.0 percent in 2011.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\" target=\"_blank\">&nbsp; &nbsp; www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/8290544642025682538-5374058755711691638?l=www.centralbanknews.info' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By www.CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp;Pakistan&#8217;s central bank cut its policy rate by 50 basis points to 9.5 percent as inflation is falling faster than expected and should end the fiscal year below the bank&#8217;s 9.5 percent target.&nbsp; The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), which has now cut its policy rate by 250 basis points this year, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2012\/12\/14\/pakistan-cuts-rate-50-bps-to-9-5-as-inflation-falls-fast\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Pakistan cuts rate 50 bps to 9.5% as inflation falls fast&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}