Australia Central Bank Keeps Policy Unchanged

(RTTNews) - Australia's central bank left its monetary policy unchanged as widely expected and vowed to hold its interest rate at a historic low until 2024.

The policy board of the Reserve Bank of Australia headed by Governor Philip Lowe decided to leave its cash rate unchanged at a record low of 0.10 percent.

The board maintained the target of 10 basis points for the April 2024 Australian Government bond. The board also voted to continue with the purchase of government securities at the rate of A$4 billion a week until at least mid February 2022.

The bank repeated that it will not increase the cash rate until actual inflation is sustainably within the 2 to 3 percent target range. The central scenario for the economy is that this condition will not be met before 2024.

Although the bank stuck to its guns by predicting that rates won't rise until 2024, high inflation will prompt rate hikes in 2023, Marcel Thieliant, an economist at Capital Economics, said.