SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore’s central bank on Friday kept its monetary policy settings unchanged, as expected, as inflation in the city-state moderates.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said it will maintain the prevailing rate of appreciation of the S$NEER policy band. There will be no change to its width and the level at which it is centred.
MAS also said it would move to a quarterly schedule of issuing monetary policy statements from 2024, which would be released in January, April, July, and October.
Gross domestic product (GDP) was up 0.7% in the July to September period on a yearly basis, according to advance estimates published by the trade ministry on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had expected growth of 0.4%.
As a heavily trade-reliant economy, Singapore uses a unique method of managing monetary policy, tweaking the exchange rate of its dollar against a basket of currencies instead of domestic interest rates like most other countries.
(Reporting by Xinghui Kok, Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor, Martin Petty)
