A reduction in the monetary policy interest rate is excluded until the end of this year, but also at the beginning of next year, stated Cristian Popa, member of the National Bank of Romania (BNR) Board.

He mentioned inter alia the tight labour market and the rising price of services.

"We have the International Monetary Fund, which has just published a study showing that more than 50% of the failures to bring inflation to the targets are caused by this rush to lower interest rates," he said, according to Economica.net.

He explained that inflation is coming down, but relatively slowly or gradually, and the central bank is trying to avoid the rise of the expected inflation level.

The BNR Board decided, at the beginning of this month, to maintain the monetary policy interest rate at 7% per year.

The key interest rate has been unchanged since January this year when the BNR increased it to 7% per annum from 6.75% per annum.

iulian@romania-insider.com

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