Latinnews Daily - 26 September 2017

Argentina: The president of the central bank (BCRA), Federico Sturzenegger, has said that conditions are not in place for the bank to start easing its monetary policy, as the national inflation rate remains high. Sturzenegger said that BCRA’s main objective remains to reduce inflation, noting that the economic policies adopted by the government led by President Mauricio Macri since it assumed office in December 2015 have resulted in the “rapid easing of inflation” but that nonetheless this remains high at around an 18% annual rate. Adding that BCRA’s objective is to bring the inflation rate down to a 1% monthly rate for the final months of the year and to 10% annually by 2018, Sturzenegger said that conditions were not currently in place for BCRA to ease its monetary policy in the next few months. Sturzenegger’s remarks came after Energy & Mining Minister Juan José Aranguren announced that the government had agreed to fully liberalise the price of petrol fuels in the domestic market from 1 October. This is the first time in 16 years that the prices of petrol fuels will not be controlled by the Argentine government and the speculation is that this may lead to an increase in petrol prices that would further stoke inflation. 

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