{"id":104730,"date":"2017-04-12T12:06:41","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T16:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=104730"},"modified":"2017-04-12T12:06:41","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T16:06:41","slug":"uganda-cuts-rate-another-50-bps-to-boost-credit-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2017\/04\/uganda-cuts-rate-another-50-bps-to-boost-credit-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Uganda cuts rate another 50 bps to boost credit, growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-726968475\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">April 12, 2017<\/div><hr style=\"border: none; border-bottom: 3px solid black;\">\r\n<\/div><\/div><p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"><u>CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a><br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Uganda&#8217;s central bank cut its Central Bank Rate (CBR) by another 50 basis points to 11.0 percent, saying there was scope to continue easing its monetary policy stance &#8220;given that core inflation is forecast to remain around the medium-term target of 5 percent and in line with efforts to support private sector credit and economic growth momentum.&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The Bank of Uganda (BOU) has now cut its rate by 100 basis points this year, following a similar reduction in February, and by 600 points since embarking on an easing cycle in April 2016.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Uganda&#8217;s headline inflation rate eased to 6.4 percent in March from 6.7 percent in February as core inflation declined to 4.8 percent from 5.7 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;The stability of the shilling exchange rate and subdued domestic demand have contributed to the dampening of inflationary pressures,&#8221; the BOU said.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;On the other hand, food inflation has continued to rise to 20.7 percent in March from 18.8 percent in February due to drought that has affected food production.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;But the central bank&#8217;s forecast indicates that the near-term outlook for inflation has improved due to the stable shilling, with the revised forecast calling for core inflation of around 5 percent in a year.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; But Uganda&#8217;s economic growth has slowed in the first two quarters of the current 2016\/17 financial year, which began July 1, 2016, and the BOU said its projected growth for 2016\/17 of 4.5 percent &#8220;is unlikely to be achieved.&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;In February the BOU cut its growth forecast to 4.5 percent from July&#8217;s forecast of 5 percent but saw growth in 2017\/18 of 5.5 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Uganda&#8217;s Gross Domestic Product grew by only 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter of calendar 2016, up from a contraction of 0.1 percent in the third quarter, mainly due to the impact of adverse weather on agriculture output which fell by about 2 percent every quarter for four consecutive quarters.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Uganda&#8217;s shilling, which fell sharply in the last quarter of 2016, has been more stable this year, though depreciating slightly.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The shilling was trading at 3,616.6 to the U.S. dollar today, down 0.4 percent this year.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The BOU maintained its band of plus\/minus 3 percentage points around the CBR rate and the margin on the rediscount rate at 4 percentage points so the rediscount rate was cut to 15 percent and the bank rate to 16 percent, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"> www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Uganda&#8217;s central bank cut its Central Bank Rate (CBR) by another 50 basis points to 11.0 percent, saying there was scope to continue easing its monetary policy stance &#8220;given that core inflation is forecast to remain around the medium-term target of 5 percent and in line with efforts to support private [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104731,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104730\/revisions\/104731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}