Bank Negara holds policy interest rate at 3.25%

The central bank says the degree of monetary accommodativeness is consistent with the intended policy stance at the current overnight policy rate.

KUALA LUMPUR: The central bank kept its key interest rate at 3.25% today as expected, as inflation is not a threat and there’s no pressure at present to raise rates.

All 10 economists polled by Reuters had forecast that Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) would hold its overnight policy rate (OPR).

“At the current level of the OPR, the degree of monetary accommodativeness is consistent with the intended policy stance,” BNM said in a statement.

The central bank raised its key rate in January, when inflation was higher, to “normalise” policy.

The January hike was BNM’s first since July 2014, and the first rate change since July 2016, when there was a 25 basis point cut.

Today’s policy meeting was the first under a new governor, Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus, and the second since a May election that brought Malaysia’s first change of government since independence in 1957. -FMT