RBA Minutes - March 2011

Mar 16, 2011 - Boris Chan

The Minutes from the RBA's March 2011 meeting are now adding to speculation that the next official GDP reading could be negative.

Flooding in Queensland and Victoria would likely take around 0.5 percentage points off GDP growth in each of the December and March quarters, but RBA said it would look beyond the short-term effect of the flooding. The economy appeared to be broadly growing at close to trend rate and the outlook for inflation in the year ahead was consistent with the bank's 2 per cent to 3 per cent medium-term target.

So the RBA left its cash rate target on hold at 4.75 per cent at the meeting.

Members confirmed that the Board's approach would be to look through temporary effects caused by extreme weather events and to continue to set monetary policy based on the medium-term outlook for growth and inflation.

What's the outlook for interest rates? 

The Reserve Bank believes that home loan rates are above average but the policy is mildly restrictive so that means that interest rates are certainly on hold for the foreseeable future and some economists believe perhaps until the end of the year.  

Related Topics:

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <p> <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <p>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Compare Products

Savings Accounts Australia

Are you getting the best value for your dollar? Here is the best Savings Accounts in Australia at the moment:

Looking for a Home Loan?

Get 30+ lenders compared and save!