The Board of Directors of the Central Bank lowered interest rates again that applies to monetary policy instruments, but that directly impacts the fixed-term rates that banks offer their clients or the rate at which they reward digital wallets the liquidity deposited in their common investment funds.
This Thursday night, the Central Bank announced that it decided to reduce the monetary policy rate from 35% to 32%. The interest rate on active repos also drops from 40% to 36%. These rates will take effect starting this Friday.
The decision of the Board of Directors is based on the expectations of lower inflation.
Precisely, this Thursday afternoon the results of the Market Expectations Survey, the monthly survey carried out by the BCRA, were known. And in that survey it was concluded that November inflation would be around 2.8% and would suffer a slight rebound to 2.9% in December. Thus, the year would close with an annual inflation of 118%, which would drop, according to this survey, to a level of between 27 and 28% in 2025.
From this reduction in rates, it is expected that deposits fixed term also yield less in nominal terms. Today, banks are offering rates around 32% annually and digital wallets a rate one or two points lower. Rates are now almost aligned with expected inflation.
But the fall in the parallel exchange rate continues to encourage investments in pesos because for now they give a good return in dollars.
The consulting firms surveyed by the Central Bank in its monthly survey of expectations said that November inflation – which the INDEC will announce next week – will once again be below 3%: specifically, The consensus was 2.8%, two tenths above the 2.7% in October.
The forecast arose from comparing the opinions of 42 participants, including 29 local and international consulting firms and research centers and 13 financial entities in Argentina.
That same survey says that for December, the CPI will be somewhat higher: the consensus was 2.9%, which will take inflation for all of 2024 to 118.8%, a forecast that is 1.2 percentage points higher. compared to the survey carried out a month ago.
In this survey it is already observed that an annual inflation – end to end – of between 27 and 28% is expected for 2025, which would fall to a level around 15% in 2026. In 2025 the official dollar would rise to around 1,250 pesos, that is, slightly below expected inflation.