By Miguel Gomes
LUANDA (Reuters) -Angola’s central bank kept its main interest rate unchanged for the sixth meeting in a row on Wednesday, citing global economic uncertainty despite a slowdown in domestic inflation.
The Bank of Angola has maintained its key lending rate at 19.50% since May last year.
The central bank has kept policy tight to try to rein in inflation, which has been gradually declining but was still at more than 22% in annual terms in April.
Angola hopes to transition to an inflation-targeting framework, which would involve setting a specific inflation target to guide monetary policy.
Governor Manuel Tiago Dias said the central bank was for now sticking to its forecast that inflation would end the year at 17.5%.
“When we look at inflation up to April, we see that there has been a fairly substantial year-on-year reduction. Our projections for May and June indicate that we will probably see a (continued) downwards trend in inflation,” he told a press conference.
Last week the International Monetary Fund cut Angola’s preliminary growth outlook for 2025 to 2.4% from an initial 3%, citing lower prices of oil and tightening external financing conditions.
(Reporting by Miguel Gomes;Writing by Bhargav Acharya and Sfundo Parakozov;Editing by Alexander Winning and Frances Kerry)
