{"id":36962,"date":"2013-03-20T05:20:21","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T09:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=36962"},"modified":"2013-03-20T05:20:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T09:20:21","slug":"iceland-holds-rate-says-pace-of-rate-rises-depend-on-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/03\/20\/iceland-holds-rate-says-pace-of-rate-rises-depend-on-inflation\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland holds rate, says pace of rate rises depend on inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"><u>www.CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a> &nbsp; &nbsp; Iceland&#8217;s central bank held its benchmark seven-day lending rate steady at 6.0 percent, saying it will be necessary to raise interest rates as spare capacity disappears from the economy but the pace of this normalisation will depend on inflation.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp;The Central Bank of Iceland, which raised rates by 125 basis points in 2012, said the economic recovery has lost some of its previous pace, which means the margin of spare capacity in the economy has narrowed further while it&#8217;s accommodative stance is still supporting economic growth.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; But if inflation declines slower than forecast, it will be necessary to reduce the monetary slack sooner &nbsp;than otherwise required, the central bank said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Inflation rose to 4.8 percent in February from 4.2 percent in January and the highest rate in eight months.&nbsp;<span style=\"line-height: 16px\">The central bank targets inflation of 2.5 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: inherit\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;font-family: inherit;line-height: 20px\">It is still the case that as spare capacity disappears from the economy, it is necessary that monetary policy slack should disappear as well. The degree to which such normalisation takes place through higher nominal Central Bank rates will depend on future inflation developments, which in turn will depend on exchange rate movements and wage-setting decisions in the near future,&#8221; it added.<\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: inherit\"><span style=\"color: #222222;line-height: 20px\"><\/span><\/span><br \/><a name='more'><\/a><span style=\"font-family: inherit\">&nbsp; &nbsp; Iceland&#8217;s central bank said the outlook is still for a gradual economic recovery and leading indicators are consistent with that prospect.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: inherit\"><span style=\"color: #222222;line-height: 20px\">&nbsp; &nbsp; Inflation, however, &#8220;proved considerably higher in February than previous anticipated,&#8221; the bank said, while on the other hand the Icelandic krona has appreciated.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: inherit\"><span style=\"color: #222222;line-height: 20px\">&nbsp; &nbsp; The bank&#8217;s decision in February to&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: inherit;line-height: 16px\">suspend regular foreign currency purchases and support the krona through foreign exchange intervention has proven effective.&nbsp;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: inherit\"><span style=\"line-height: 16px\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;line-height: 20px\">The Bank\u2019s actions have reduced the risk that self-fulfilling expectations of a depreciation will weaken the kr\u00f3na still further, and in this way they have supported monetary policy,&#8221; the bank said.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: inherit\"><span style=\"color: #222222;line-height: 20px\">&nbsp; &nbsp; Iceland&#8217;s&nbsp;<\/span><\/span>Gross Domestic Product expanded by only 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter from the third, down from the third quarter&#8217;s expansion of 4.8 percent from the second. Annual growth in the fourth quarter was 1.4 percent &nbsp;down from 2.2 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; <br \/> <span style=\"font-family: inherit\">&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\" target=\"_blank\">&nbsp; www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><br style=\"line-height: 16px\" \/><span style=\"line-height: 16px\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By www.CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; Iceland&#8217;s central bank held its benchmark seven-day lending rate steady at 6.0 percent, saying it will be necessary to raise interest rates as spare capacity disappears from the economy but the pace of this normalisation will depend on inflation.&nbsp; &nbsp;The Central Bank of Iceland, which raised rates by 125 basis points &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/03\/20\/iceland-holds-rate-says-pace-of-rate-rises-depend-on-inflation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Iceland holds rate, says pace of rate rises depend on inflation&#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-36962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36962","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=36962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}