Live Updates > Live Update Details
2026-02-17 18:27:11
[Divergence Emerges Within the Polish Central Bank: Is an April Rate Cut "Safer" Than March?] ⑴ Jereniusz Dombrovski, a member of the Polish Monetary Policy Committee, stated on Tuesday that April might be a "safer" time to cut rates compared to March, as more complete first-quarter data would be available then. However, he emphasized that the possibility of the council acting earlier cannot be ruled out, and the probability of a rate cut in March remains 50%. ⑵ Dombrovski expects Poland's main interest rate to fall to 3.5% this year. However, he warned that any further rate cuts below that level would face a "major debate," as 3.5% could become the target rate for many years to come. He explicitly opposed radical monetary policy adjustments and ruled out the possibility of a "one-step" drop to 3.5%. ⑶ Regarding data, Poland's inflation rate rose 2.2% year-on-year in January, a slight decrease from 2.4% in December, but higher than economists' expectations of 1.9%. It should be noted that the January data was calculated based on the old version of the inflation basket. The National Bureau of Statistics will release revised data based on the new weights in March, but this will be after the next MPC meeting. (4) Dombrovski believes that the inflation rate this year is likely to remain at the lower end of the 1.5%-2.5% target range. Recently, Polish Central Bank Governor Adam Grapinski and several other committee members have hinted that March would be an appropriate time to ease monetary policy. The central bank kept the main interest rate unchanged at 4.00% at its February meeting, awaiting the new macroeconomic forecasts to be released in March to assess the prospect of further interest rate cuts.
