Australia holds rates at 4.5%

by Richard Kilner

Story link: Australia holds rates at 4.5%

The Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia has chosen to keep the country’s interest rate unchanged at 4.5%.

The decision means that the Australian interest rate has now stood at 4.5% since May of this year, following a period of rises during which it increased by 150 basis points from September 2009 to May 2010.

Governor Glenn Stevens has reported that the Australian economy has recently outperformed trend growth, but will probably settle down to trend growth levels in the latter half of 2010.

Australia is the latest in a series of central banks to keep interest rates steady.

The European Central Bank (ECB) earlier this week left the eurozone’s historic low rate of 1% unchanged, and the Bank of Japan has also left the Japanese rate steady at 0.1%.

Later this week the Bank of England will make its monetary policy decision, with the probablity being that it will also remain unaltered.