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Pretoria - The South African Reserve Bank's monetary policy committee has left the key repo rate unchanged at 12%, with the prime lending rate remaining at 15.5%.
The consensus view among economists was for the MPC to leave the repo rate unchanged. Only seven of 26 economists polled by Reuters had expected that the rate would be raised.
This is the second time in 12 meetings that the rate has been paused since June 2006; at all other meetings, rates have been raised by 50 basis points each time.
Inflation has consistently come in above the upper end of the committee's 3-6% target range, with inflation as measured by the consumer price index excluding mortgage rates (or CPIX, which the MPC targets) hitting 11.6% in June this year.
Economists expect that CPIX inflation will return within its target range in the latter half of 2009. Statistics South Africa will apply new weightings to the components that comprise the inflation basket at the beginning of 2009.
- Fin24.com