Hungary central bank leaves base rate on hold

Rate-setters of the National Bank of Hungary left base rate unchanged at 0.90 percent at a regular meeting on Tuesday.

The Council has left the rates unchanged for more than half a year and have tweaked monetary policy on a quarterly basis, coinciding with the publication of the central bank’s Inflation Report. After the latest Inflation Report was published in September, the rate-setters decided to set the amount of liquidity to be crowded out from central bank instruments in the fourth quarter at 300-500 billion forints (EUR 907m-1.5bn), up from 200-400 billion in the previous quarter. The rate-setters take the level into account when setting the stock of National Bank of Hungary swap instruments, one of the central bank’s main policy tools.

In a statement released after the policy meeting on Tuesday, the Council said they continue to “rely mainly” on incoming data and the projections in the Inflation Report.