On Wednesday, the eye-catcher was the Monetary Policy Council (MPC) meeting of the National Bank of Poland (NBP). In line with expectations, the MPC decided to cut interest rates by 25 basis points as, according to the official statement, “incoming data confirm a considerable economic slowdown in Poland, which results in limited wage and inflationary pressures”. However, comments of NBP president Belka at the following press conference did surprise most of the market(30 minutes after the news releases, the zloty strengthened from EUR/PLN 4.107 to 4.086.). Belka said that another rate cut was possible, maybe even probable, but added that a round of rate cuts was coming to an end.
Such a scenario is in line with our expectations. As we already pointed out, we believe that the Polish economy is heading for better times (see our last “Central European Weekly”). Moreover, recent voting results suggest that the MPC is far less dovish than markets expects. For example, even after the release of the surprisingly weak GDP growth for Q3 2012, six members of the council rejected to support a 50 bps rate cut and six members voted against a 25 bps cut.
Regarding the Czech koruna, the currency weakened yesterday after Czech National Bank’s (CNB) governor Singer had reiterated that the CNB might intervene against it this year. Unlike in his earlier comments, he said that the CNB may set a target exchange rate level if it decides to intervene. As a result, the koruna breached above resistance at EUR/CZK 25.635 and at the time of writing this Daily it was seen at 25.68. Technically, the next targets are EUR/CZK 25.76
and 25.98 respectively.