Photo by: Reuters
The rise in South Africa’s inflation rate to a 30-month high is unlikely to bring forward an interest-rate hike as the central bank had forecast a second-quarter spike in price growth.
Consumer prices rose 5.2% in May from a year earlier, compared with 4.4% in April, Pretoria-based Statistics South Africa said Wednesday in a statement on its website. That matched the median of 15 economists’ estimates and was above the 4.5% midpoint of the central bank’s target range for the first time in 15 months.
The Reserve Bank’s quarterly projection model in May showed that inflation would breach 4.5% -- where the monetary policy committee prefers to anchor price growth -- in the second quarter and again in the fourth. The model also indicated a 25 basis-point increase in its benchmark rate in each of those two quarters.