TAIPEI: Taiwan’s Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) suggested at a legislative finance committee on Thursday that interest rates would remain unchanged in the bank’s upcoming rate-setting meeting.
The bank’s next rate-setting gathering is scheduled for March 21.
The country’s rediscount rate has been kept at 1.375% for 10 straight quarters.
Yang cited major forecast reports, which expect the rate of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation to hover between 0.73 percent and 1.39 percent for 2019, to say that the bank will continue to properly control the money supply through open market operations to ensure a moderately loose monetary policy.
The central banker is expecting domestic economic growth to slow slightly in 2019 along with an outlook of mild inflation, so he suggested the possibility of hiking rates would be low.
Yang also warned of three major risks facing the world in the meeting, including the uncertainty over the US-China trade war, China’s economic slowdown, and a no-deal Brexit.