The board of directors of the Banco de la República in its June meeting unanimously maintained its market interest rate unchanged at 13.25 percent. In this sixth meeting of the collegiate body of the issuing bank, Ricardo Bonilla participated for the first time since he arrived at the Ministry of Finance.
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Both the manager of the Banco de la República and the Minister of Finance They did not give clear signals about when it will be the moment to start lowering the interest rate, but they agreed that the entity continues to monitor the different indicators of the economy, but especially, the course that keeps inflation going, as well as fuel prices and the evolution of the exchange rate.
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«We have to be very cautious,» said Minister Bonilla, but a positive sign is that the unanimous decision of the bank’s board of directors to leave the intervention rate at the current level, and to the extent that a downward trend in inflation is consolidated, it will be analyzed when the right moment may be to initiating a rate cut, the official said.
Leonardo Villar, for his part, said that the Banco de la República technical team continues to see obstacles to a drop in rates, such as the fuel issue and the observed growth of the exchange rate, but insisted that As expected inflation begins to show much clearer signs of easing, consider changing your current monetary policy stance.
The process of reducing basic inflation has already begun, but we hope that going forward this decrease will be much more consolidated, only, in the second semester of the year», specified the manager of the issuing bank of Colombia.
Regarding unemployment, Villar said that there was a slight reduction in unemployment rates as well and a slight increase in the unemployment rate, but these are clearly positive results. «We will have to see what conclusions the bank’s technical team draws when they study Dane’s figures in more detail in this regard,» insisted the manager.