MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippine central bank is set to raise interest rates this month, although the Monetary Board may decide whether to raise the policy rate by 25 or 50 basis points, its governor said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday.
Felipe Medalla expressed relief that the Fed may scale back rate hikes. On Tuesday, he said the BSP would likely pause tightening in the first quarter of next year unless there was “no major shock”.
“Of course we won’t be doing zero and I can’t speak for the rest of the board. But I think board members might be doing 300 or 2023 split between the two,” he said.
Medalla to lead seven-member monetary committee that will review BSP at its final policy meeting of the year in Dec14 interest rate setting.
Since May, the BSP has raised the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points cumulatively to combat inflation.
When asked if he thought the BSP key rate would peak in the first half of 300, Medalla replied: “Yes”.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that the U.S. central bank’s December 14-14 Ahead of the meeting, it is time to slow down the pace of the upcoming rate hike, which is widely expected to increase by 0.5 percentage points.
