It was the fourth consecutive monetary policy in the past six months when the bank made no change in the policy rate, maintaining the tight policy partly due to high inflation. It avoided projection of average inflation reading for the current fiscal year in the monetary policy statement. Policy rate is a tool available with the central bank for controlling inflation, which is a must to achieve sustainable economic growth. The SBP cumulatively jacked up the policy rate by 15 percentage points in a period of 27 months to 22% in June 2023. Read PSX rebounds strongly on policy rate status quoThe latest monetary policy statement added that the State Bank decided to maintain the policy rate at 22%.

Source: The Express Tribune December 13, 2023 10:28 UTC