Norges Bank expected to remain ‘on hold’ this week – Danske Bank

Mikael Milhoj, Editor at Danske Bank, sees the Norges Bank keeping its monetary stance unchanged at this week’s meeting.

Key Quotes

“In Norway, we do not expect any changes to interest rates at Norges Bank’s meeting on Thursday. This is only an ‘interim’ meeting, with no new monetary policy report or press conference, just a press release”.

“Traditionally, it has taken a big change in the outlook for Norges Bank to touch interest rates or put out any new signals at all at such meetings. Since the previous ‘full’ meeting in September, data have been somewhat on the weak side but nowhere near bad enough for Norges Bank to have changed its stance in only a little over a month, especially as some of this weakness is on the back of a period of very strong data, particularly in manufacturing”.

“While inflation was also somewhat lower than expected in September, this was due almost entirely to lower food prices rather than a broad-based slowdown in prices. In addition, although unemployment now seems to be falling slightly more slowly than earlier this year, this is probably no more than Norges Bank expected. The October telephone round of the regional network survey (not a full report) also revealed little change in firms’ expectations since August”.