The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says the country\u2019s inflation rate could drop to around 14.2 percent by June this year, subject to a good crop season and an increase in the agricultural output this growing season.<\/p>\n
The central bank is also aiming at maintaining foreign exchange reserve coverage of at least 3 months of imports by mid this year.<\/p>\n
In its first Monetary Policy statement for 2016 released yesterday, RBM says for the year 2016, the monetary policy will aim to bring down annual headline inflation to the target of 14.2 percent in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cRBM intends to maintain a tight monetary policy stance in the coming months while ensuring sufficient foreign exchange reserves to support private sector activities,\u201d reads the RBM report, in part.<\/p>\n
According to the statement, inflation is forecasted to decline to 19.3 percent with a better crop in the 2015\/16 growing season, a rate which is, however, higher than the government\u2019s target of 14.2 percent.<\/p>\n
It says, however, that monetary policy will have to be tighter in order for the objective to be achieved and that achievement of the goal will also require a concerted effort.<\/p>\n
RBM\u2019s optimistic projection, however, comes amid a continued upward spiral of inflation in 2015 which was expected to close at 26.2 percent in December, as well as continue depreciation of the kwacha.<\/p>\n
The monetary policy objective for the 2014\/15 was to bring inflation to 15.0 percent by June 2015 with an inferred target of 12.0 percent in December 2015.<\/p>\n
However, headline inflation for October and November 2015 was recorded at 24.7 percent and 24.6 percent; respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says the country\u2019s inflation rate could drop to around 14.2 percent by June this year, subject to a good crop season and an increase in the agricultural output this growing season. The central bank is also aiming at maintaining foreign exchange reserve coverage of at least 3 months of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}