The National Bank of Poland has proved several times in recent months that one ought to be very careful about trusting its statements, and this has also been the case in recent days. Two days after the bank, through its President Belka, played down the importance of the significant depreciation of the zloty, the NBP, in the wake of the release of good figures from the U.S. labor market, started to intervene in favor of the Polish currency! According to Mr. Belka’s words, the NBP’s intentions are not to fight against the trend but rather lower the zloty’s volatility. In any case, this has made the monetary policy of the NBP slightly schizophrenic – with monetary easing through interest rates on the one hand, and monetary tightening through the currency exchange rate on the other.
In any event, the behavior of the NBP bears out our hypothesis that the key risk to the scenario of another rate cut is the continuation of the sale in bond markets and consequently a further depreciation of the zloty. Adam Glapinski, a member of the Monetary Policy Council, has supported the hypothesis on Saturday as he said that rather than supporting the economy the prospective rate cut could increase risks of capital outflows. These are factors that the NBP can influence by its decisions to a very limited extent, as they are primarily based on external effects, and the central bank itself acknowledges that. In any case, further rate cuts by the NBP are unlikely to benefit the zloty now, because the market, assuming from FRA and WIBOR rates, only envisages something like that to a limited extent. Hence investors are likely to remain dubious in anticipating further steps by the NBP.