Adam Glapinski, head of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), has said that the country’s interest rates are now at an adequate level following a series of rate hikes.
The Monetary Policy Council (RPP), the Polish central bank’s rate-setting body, decided to keep the reference interest rate at 6.75% on February 8.
“According to our assessment today, the current level of the NBP rates is adequate,” Glapinski said at a press conference on February 9.
The RPP left rates unchanged for the fifth time running following 11 consecutive increases aimed at curbing inflation.
Glapinski added that other Central and Eastern European countries had pursued similar policies. “They have reached a level and stopped.”
However, inflation is far from being contained, according to the NBP head.
“We don’t think that inflation is low,” he said.
“Inflation is very, very high,” Glapinski continued, adding that it was far too soon to consider rate cuts and that the hike cycle had not been formally concluded.
The prices of consumer goods and services (Consumer Price Index, CPI) went up by 16.6% YoY and by 0.1% MoM in December 2022 and inflation in the whole of 2022 was the highest since 1997.
But Glapinski expressed an optimistic view about the inflation path, claiming that the CPI would be substantially lower as of the fourth quarter of 2023.
“Our projections show that it could be somewhere around 8% in the last quarter, it could be 7.7%, perhaps 7.8%, about 8%,” he said.
“We can see a light at the end of the tunnel, this happy moment when we’ll finally enjoy inflation going down month by month,” the central bank head said. (PAP/Business World Magazine)