The president of the Central Bank of Uruguay (BCU), Diego Labat, He praised the country’s monetary policy and stressed that inflation is at the level stipulated by the government and highlighted its position in the world.
According to the latest report on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) estimates prepared by the National Institute of Statistics (INE)corresponding to June, inflation in Uruguay was 4.96% year-on-year, while the monthly variation was 0.36%. Meanwhile, the annual accumulated rate reached 3.62%, establishing the number of the General Index at 108.34.
Based on this, Labat celebrated the numbers and assured that they are in a good place. “Today we are where we wanted to be. Inflation is at the levels we expected to have,” said the president of the organization, although he admitted that they are still at a high level of inflation at an international level. However, Uruguay is in the middle and above on the list, which reassures the leader.
“We still have to consolidate this process of low inflation as we want, in the middle of the range,” explained the president of the BCU and assured that the objective is to maintain an annual inflation rate of 4.5%. In this regard, he commented that economic leaders expect higher inflation by the end of the year, an expectation that makes the government body uncomfortable.
The latest decision of the BCU
Two days ago the BCU decided to maintain the interest rates by 8.5%, in line with the expectations of the financial market, as expected from the last meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (Copom).
In this way, the Copom maintained the Monetary Policy Rate (TPM) for the second consecutive time, after the decision in May, waiting for the consolidation of the inflation within the target range.
The BCU authorities acted in line with what the financial market had anticipated, which expected rates to remain the same and projected only a reduction until the end of the year. With this scenario, the TPM remains just below the cut-off rates of the Monetary Regulation Letters (LRM), close to 8.6%.
“It is a place where we believe we will maintain it because we are comfortable today, but the process is not consolidated,” the president clarified.
On debt restructuring
At the beginning of this month, the BCU announced a program, promoted jointly with the Consumer Defense Unit of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), which seeks to facilitate the regularization of the credit situation of debtors who as of April 30, 2022 were in Category 5 in the Central Credit Risk Center of the BCU, and who remained in that situation as of May of this year for up to 780,000 debtors.
In this regard, the president of the BCU celebrated the organization’s measure and the high level of support from citizens. “It was very important that the process was dynamic, because with 700,000 people in this condition, one cannot create a paper-based bureaucratic process. That is why we worked hard and from the bank we collaborated to provide a simple computer solution,” he said.
Source: Ambito
