LAHORE: The next meeting of monetary police committee (MPC) is so far scheduled on March 16, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has said. The statement has come amid speculations over the announcement of an off-cycle review of the SBP to raise the interest rate.
Since the previous meeting held during the last month no MPC meeting was held and the next meeting is held on March 16. A rate hike of 100 basis points was announced in the previous MPC meeting that took the policy rate to 17 percent which is the highest since October 1997. However, persistent pressure of inflation was said to be the reason of the hike.
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According to the reading of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) the inflation had increased at pace of 27.6 percent which was the highest in 48 years.
There has already been a hike with the interest rate on short term government pricing that has risen to 19.95 percent. The government has borrowed Rs258 billion at a higher cutoff yield.
