WAITING GAME
…SA Reserve Bank shifts to ‘wait and see’ after Covid-19 response
JOHANNESBURG
- The SA Reserve Bank has shifted to a “wait and see” strategy as it expects the repo rate to remain low after aggressive monetary- policy easing in the first half of the year to counter the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.
“While the initial Covid-19 shock clearly justified a forceful response,” policy is once again more data dependent with the rate either cut by smaller increments or left unchanged in the second half of the year, the SARB said on Tuesday in its six-monthly Monetary Policy Review.
The central bank last month held the repo rate at 3.5 percent after 300 basis points of reductions this year.
With the key rate at the lowest level since it was introduced in 1998 and inflation forecast to have bottomed out, it’s likely to move “somewhat higher” in future, the central bank said.
The normalisation of the repurchase rate is “likely to be gradual, with rates staying at low levels for an extended period,” it said. While the monetary policy committee hasn’t committed to an interest- rate trajectory, the bank’s forecasting model suggests an upward movement will take place toward the end of 2021. The model shows the repo rate at 4.03 percent by the end of that year.
The central bank has been criticised by politicians and labour-union officials who say it should be doing more to create jobs and support an economy that it sees contracting by 8.2 percent this year. However, it maintains that monetary policy alone can’t deliver prosperity.
“Monetary policy is providing significant support, but low rates would provide even more stimulus if there were greater certainty about the economy’s medium-term direction,” it said.
Even with a rebound expected in the third quarter, output will only recover to pre-virus levels by mid 2023, according to central bank forecasts.
It could recover faster if constraints including electricity shortages, record-high government debt and weak confidence are addressed, the bank said.