Poland's interest rates are almost certain to be kept unchanged by the middle of 2014, while they are highly likely to remain flat until the end of 2014, deems member of the Monetary Policy Council (MPC) Adam Glapinski, seen as one of the "hawks" in the Council.
Glapinski went on to say that he is conservative and will be as unhurried with raising the rates as he was with lowering them. He argued that since economic growth is unlikely to exceed 2.5%, it is not strong enough to cause any risk in terms of inflation.
In the last few months, MPC continued to state in its monthly press release that interest rates should remain unchanged at least by the end of 2013. However, the National Bank of Poland's (NBP) governor Marek Belka recently said that his views are close to those central bankers who see Poland's interest rates remaining at a record low through at least H1 of 2014.
Over the entire cycle, the Council decreased interest rates by 2.25pps, in particular reducing the reference rate to the level of 2.5% in July of 2013, thus keeping this rate positive in real terms.
Bank economists now expect interest rates to remain flat for at least till the middle of 2014, but many of them point to September or October as the beginning of the policy tightening cycle.
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