Manuel Tiago Dias, who was speaking at a press conference at the end of the 123rd meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, stressed that the monthly inflation rate slowed down again, reaching 1.34 percent in April, compared to 1.38 percent in March, also highlighting that inflation over the last 12 months was 22.32 percent in April, lower than the 23.85 percent in the previous month.
This observed slowdown is due, according to the governor of the central bank, to the current conditions of the economy, “marked by the availability of a greater supply of products for broad consumption, associated with adequate monetary conditions and the relative stability of the exchange rate”.
The BNA governor also said that they will continue to monitor the direction of the economy, also awaiting data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) on the performance of economic activity in the first quarter of this year.
“We intend to look at our projections and possibly update them in July, at the time of our Monetary Policy Committee meeting,” he stressed.
According to Manuel Tiago Dias, a possible change in the BNA's targets has been considered, because the annual inflation rate in 2024 was 27.5 percent, with the inflation target for 2025 being 17.5 percent, a reduction of 10 percentage points.
“When we look at the accumulated inflation, up until April, of 22.3 percent, we have already had a very substantial reduction here, in the order of 50 percent of what we intend to achieve by the end of the year”, he stressed, however.
Manuel Tiago Dias stated that, for May and June, projections point to a downward trend in annual inflation, “which is why our projections will only be revised in July”, both for inflation and for the Gross Domestic Product.
“We have always said, since last year, that we would see a continuous fall in year-on-year inflation until the months of May, June, 2025, and that is what is happening,” he said.
