{"id":119354,"date":"2018-01-10T00:25:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T05:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=119354"},"modified":"2018-06-01T15:46:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T15:46:46","slug":"argentina-cuts-rate-75-bps-as-disinflation-seen-continuing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2018\/01\/argentina-cuts-rate-75-bps-as-disinflation-seen-continuing\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina cuts rate 75 bps as disinflation seen continuing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-16123078\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">January 10, 2018<\/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; Argentina&#8217;s central bank lowered its monetary policy rate by 75 basis points to 28.00 percent to prevent &#8220;a contractionary bias of monetary policy&#8221; as the disinflationary process is persisting despite expectations that inflation in December will reflect a strong rise in the regulated prices of gas and electricity.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The rate cut by t<span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">he Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) comes after it raised its rate three times in 2017 by a total of 400 basis points to curb rising inflation as the government of Mauricio Macri continues to cut a wide range of subsidies to&nbsp;<\/span>boost<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;<\/span>economic<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;<\/span>growth<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;and reduce the fiscal deficit.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The BCRA said core&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">inflation<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;in the last three months was close to 18 percent in annualized terms and data showed this favorable dynamic persisted through December and in the&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">first<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;days of January,&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">necessitating<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;a cut in the reference rate to prevent a&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">contractionary<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;bias in monetary policy.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Argentina&#8217;s headline&nbsp;<\/span>inflation<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;rate eased to 22.4 percent in November from 22.7 percent in October while core inflation eased to 21.2 percent from 21.7 percent, according to the BCRA.&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The central bank has emphasized in recent months that inflation has broken the level of persistence that was seen from mid-2016 to mid-2017 but monetary policy maintained a strong&nbsp;<\/span>contractionary bias to avoid any spillover from higher regulated prices to core inflation.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The BCR said it&nbsp;would be &#8220;cautious&#8221; in adapting monetary&nbsp;policy to the new path of disinflation and &#8220;a moderation in the contractionary bias can only be sustained over time to the extent that the&nbsp;evolution of&nbsp;disinflation is compatible with the trajectory sought.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; It added it&nbsp;would conduct monetary&nbsp;policy to reach its target of 15 percent inflation in 2018.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">In late December Argentina&#8217;s government pushed back its aim to&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">lower<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;inflation to 5 percent by one year to 2010 and raised its 2018 target to 15 percent from 8-12 percent. For 2019 the inflation target is 10&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">percent<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The BCRA said core&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">inflation<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;in the last three months was close to 18 percent in annualized terms and data showed this favorable dynamic persisted through December and in the&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">first<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;days of January,&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">necessitating<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;a cut in the reference rate to prevent a&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\">contractionary<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;bias in monetary policy.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;BCRA said inflation was expected to rise to 17.4 percent from 16.6 percent due to a change in regulated prices while core inflation was expected to remain stable at 14.9 percent.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Expectations for 2019&nbsp;<\/span>headline<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;<\/span>inflation<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;rose to 11.6 percent from 11.3 percent while expectations for core&nbsp;<\/span>inflation<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;<\/span>fell<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;to 10.0 percent from 10.4 percent. For 2020 the forecast was 8.0 percent.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Earlier this week Argentina returned to the&nbsp;<\/span>international<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;debt market by placing $9 billion in bonds, with demand more than double than the amount issued.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Last month the&nbsp;<\/span>International<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;Monetary Fund&nbsp;<\/span>forecast<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;2018 inflation of 16.3 percent &#8211; above the government&#8217;s 15.0 percent forecast &#8211; 2019 inflation of 11.8 percent and 10.0 percent in 2020 while growth is seen at 2.5 percent.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\"><br \/><\/span><\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\">www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\"><br \/><\/span><\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Argentina&#8217;s central bank lowered its monetary policy rate by 75 basis points to 28.00 percent to prevent &#8220;a contractionary bias of monetary policy&#8221; as the disinflationary process is persisting despite expectations that inflation in December will reflect a strong rise in the regulated prices of gas and electricity.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [&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-119354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119354","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=119354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119355,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119354\/revisions\/119355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}