Policy rate likely to remain at 25.5%

There are high expectations the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Ghana will maintain its policy rate at 25.5 percent today.

The Policy rate is indicative of the rate at which the Central Bank lends to commercial banks.

The committee has since Friday been meeting to review development in the economy. The Bank is expected to climax its meeting today, January 23 with a news conference to announce a review of the policy rate.

Head of Research at GN Research Samuel Ampah is predicting that the Central Bank will maintain the policy rate.

“We have seen that petroleum prices have gone up, we are told that the budget deficit might run above the expected budget deficit of about 5% and to about 9% and since we are still within the IMF programme, definitely we will have the zero financing of government budget and so it will be difficult for the fiscal side to hold due to that policy.

“And then we also see that there will be some inflation risk and most critically the depreciation of the currency within the past weeks,” Ampah noted.