SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s central bank director Gabriel Galipolo said on Wednesday that the monetary authority should not get spooked with “short-term” market fluctuations and will need time to understand how recent moves affect its mandates.
Emerging market currencies, including Brazil’s real, have slumped in recent days as the dollar soared on rising geopolitical tensions and fading hopes of an interest rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Galipolo acknowledged that countries that started lowering rates early as inflation receded, such as Brazil, were among the most hit by the recent repricing of the U.S. yield curve and the strengthening of the greenback.
Yet, he called at an event in Sao Paulo for “parsimony and serenity” as policymakers react to those moves.
“The risk that we face is waiting too much to react and getting behind,” Galipolo said. “(But) we want to give it time to understand how the adjustment in the U.S. interest rate curve plays out in our inflation mandate.”
Brazil’s central bank delivered 50-basis-point interest rate cuts at each of its last six meetings and last month signaled another cut of the same magnitude for its May meeting, while saying the June decision would be more data-dependent.
Due to increasing global and local uncertainties, however, Governor Roberto Campos Neto has opened the door for that easing pace to be reduced and market players such as JPMorgan already foresee a 25-basis-point cut next month.
(Reporting by Fernando Cardoso; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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