Reserve Bank gears up for another close cash rate call

Reserve Bank gears up for another close cash rate call

The Reserve Bank board is about to make one other powerful rate of interest resolution within the combat towards persistent however tempering inflation.

Board members will weigh up sturdy however considerably unreliable month-to-month inflation information – which got here in at 6.8 per cent in April, up from 6.3 per cent in March – in addition to indicators of an easing however nonetheless strong jobs market.

The central financial institution can be contemplating contemporary wage information, which revealed pay packets rising at 3.7 per cent within the March quarter.

Wage progress alone is unlikely to fret the RBA, which is snug with wages hitting a peak of 4 per cent annual progress.

But governor Philip Lowe stays involved about unit labour prices – the distinction between wages progress and productiveness progress.

Dr Lowe instructed a parliamentary listening to final week that sluggish productiveness progress, not wages, was complicating the RBA’s job of returning inflation to focus on.

Some economists have additionally flagged the Fair Work Commission’s minimal wage resolution as a attainable trigger for concern that might push pay packets greater than the RBA can handle.

On a backdrop of financial complexity and uncertainty, most specialists agree there’s a dwell debate between a pause and one other 25 foundation level hike when the RBA board meets on Tuesday afternoon.

A survey of 39 economists by comparability website Finder discovered barely greater than half count on the money price to remain on maintain at 3.85 per cent.

Another hike will carry the money price to 4.1 per cent and mark the twelfth rate of interest hike since May 2022.

For mortgage holders, one other 25bps would add an additional $1217 to month-to-month repayments, cumulatively, on the usual $500,000, 30-year residence mortgage.

Source: www.perthnow.com.au