{"id":169774,"date":"2020-04-30T20:18:09","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T00:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.countingpips.com\/?p=169774"},"modified":"2020-04-30T17:18:34","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T21:18:34","slug":"colombia-cuts-rate-2nd-time-to-boost-us-dollar-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2020\/04\/colombia-cuts-rate-2nd-time-to-boost-us-dollar-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia cuts rate 2nd time, to boost US dollar sales"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-1113369651\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">April 30, 2020<\/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><\/p>\n<p>Colombia&#8217;s central bank cut its rate for the second time this year to continue what it described as a &#8220;countercyclical drive of monetary policy&#8221; and said it would increase the amount of currency hedging by conducting new sales of U.S. dollars through forward operations for up to US$1 billion.<br \/>\nThe Central Bank of Colombia (CBC) cut its benchmark interest rate by another 50 basis points to 3.25 percent and has now cut it by 100 points this year following a similar cut in March.<br \/>\nThe rate cut was expected by analysts who expect the rate to be cut further to 3.0 percent by mid-year.<br \/>\nIn April 2014 CBC embarked on a tightening cycle, raising its rate 14 times by 450 basis points to 7.75 percent in July 2016.<br \/>\nBut in December 2016 it reversed course, lowering the rate 12 times until it paused in April 2018.<br \/>\nThe rate cut in March this year was the first cut since then.<br \/>\nIn today&#8217;s statement, CBC said it would also continue to hold foreign exchange swaps for up to US$400 million.<br \/>\nEarlier this month the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast Colombia&#8217;s economy, which remained resilient last year with growth of 3.3 percent, would contract 2.4 percent this year due to the disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic and lower oil prices.<br \/>\nThis would be Colombia&#8217;s first economic recession since 1999. Growth in 2021 is expected to rebound and remain around 3.5 percent over the medium term, supported by domestic demand.<br \/>\nColombia&#8217;s peso fell sharply at the start of March but has stabilized since then and was trading around 3,958 to the U.S. dollar today, down 17 percent this year.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\">www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CentralBankNews.info Colombia&#8217;s central bank cut its rate for the second time this year to continue what it described as a &#8220;countercyclical drive of monetary policy&#8221; and said it would increase the amount of currency hedging by conducting new sales of U.S. dollars through forward operations for up to US$1 billion. The Central Bank of [&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-169774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169774","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=169774"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169776,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169774\/revisions\/169776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}