Page 4 - February Statement News Today

The Monetary Policy Committee agreed to maintain the current stimulatory level of monetary settings in order to meet its consumer price inflation and employment objectives. The Committee will keep the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 0.25 percent, and the Large Scale Asset Purchase and Funding for Lending programmes unchanged. The global economic outlook has continued to improve since the February Monetary Policy Statement. Ongoing fiscal and monetary stimulus are continuing to underpin the global r...

MacroBusiness Access Subscriber Only Content Via Westpac: The growth rate of the Index continues to point to above trend growth in the Australian economy through 2021. In its February Statement on Monetary Policy the Reserve Bank forecast growth of 3.5% for 2021, almost in line with the Westpac forecast of 4%. With population growth forecast to slow to 0.2% in 2021 compared to 1.5% in 2019, both forecasts represent significant above trend growth. Westpac expects this growth to be led by the con...

MacroBusiness Access Subscriber Only Content By Gareth Aird, head of Australian economics at CBA: Key Points: The trimmed mean CPI on our forecasts will print at +0.4% (+1.2%/yr). The inflation debate may heat up over 2021 as we expect some ‘demand-pull’ inflation to show up in the data. Overview The unique nature of theCOVID-19economic shock and the policy response to it means that the outlook for inflation is a little more uncertain than it has been in recent years. As a result, financial...

MacroBusiness Access Subscriber Only Content By Gareth Aird, head of Australian economics at CBA: Key Points: With weak wages growth set to persist and some further appreciation of the Australian dollar expected, the outlook points to low inflation continuing over 2021. But our expectations for a strong consumer-led economic recovery means some demand-pull inflation is likely and the risk of underlying inflation pushing through2%/yr over 2021 is non-trivial. Financial markets will be on high al...