The announcement came after the meeting of the monetary policy committee of the BNA in which the governor of the central bank made a summary of the national and international macroeconomic situation and future prospects.
Lima Massano indicated that inflationary pressures remained in the second quarter, at levels above 25 percent, with inflation reaching 26.9 percent in August, mainly due to the rise in food prices.
The governor of the BNA estimated that inflation will reach 27 percent at the end of the year, with a reduction only from 2022 onwards.
"The combination of price increases in international markets and the maintenance of factors that determine the behavior of prices in the domestic market, despite the exchange rate stability framework, foresee the continuation of inflationary pressures in the short term".
Thus, for 2021 it is now expected "a year-to-date inflation of around 27 percent and a scenario of inflection in the trajectory of inflation from 2022 onwards", he justified.
Even so, Lima Massano considered that the measures taken have been the most adequate, so that the current interest rates will be maintained at 20 percent, the liquidity supply rate at 25 percent and the liquidity absorption rate at 15 percent and reserve requirements unchanged at 22 percent.
In May, the monetary policy committee had already revised the value of the inflation rate, from 18.7 percent to 19.5 percent.
The monthly variation of the National Consumer Price Index (IPCN) has been fixed in recent months at levels above 2 percent, driven mainly by the food and non-alcoholic beverages class, which in the last five months represented on average about 70 percent of total inflation, according to Lima Massano
In accumulated terms, the IPCN rate of change until August 2021 stood at 16.88 percent and the year-on-year inflation rate (last 12 months) stood at 26.09 percent, driven by the class of food and non-alcoholic beverages, whose variation was 32.39 percent.
