“At the moment, however, given the Fed action was as expected and inflation for now is seen to be well behaved, there appears to be no need to tweak policy settings,” Tetangco added. The higher benchmark interest rate will push up costs for mortgages and credit cards. Nevertheless, he said that more generally, Asian central banks are unlikely to panic even if their currencies do lose some ground against the US dollar. Subdued inflationary pressures across the region mean that central banks will not worry about currency depreciation pushing up import costs. Finally, some central banks (and their country’s exporters) may welcome some currency weakness and the boost it should provide to their competitiveness,” he said.

Source: Manila Times March 16, 2017 17:37 UTC