LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) – The \u200bIran war has seen major central banks put interest rates on hold in April and stymied \u200can easing push in emerging economies as policymakers face inflation pressures and volatile markets.<\/p>\n
Six of the central banks overseeing the 10 most heavily traded currencies left rates unchanged last month: the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, but also Canada, New Zealand and Japan.<\/p>\n
Central banks in \u200bSwitzerland, Australia, Sweden and Norway held no rate-setting meetings.<\/p>\n
“Oil prices have surged and markets are pricing higher \u200binflation and rate hikes, even if central banks stayed on hold,” said Christian Keller, head \u2060of economics research at Barclays.<\/p>\n
Since the Iran war began on February 28, fears of supply disruption have pushed oil \u200bprices sharply higher, with the surge in energy costs feeding into fuel and transport prices and lifting global inflation expectations.<\/p>\n
In \u200bthe year to end-April, G10 central banks have delivered no rate cuts and 50 basis points of hikes across two moves by Australia’s central bank. Australia built on those hikes when it lifted interest rates again on May 5.<\/p>\n
In 2025 and 2024, G10 central banks delivered \u200b850 bps and 800 bps in easing, respectively.<\/p>\n
The trend was also visible across emerging economies.<\/p>\n
Two central banks from a \u200bReuters sample of 18 developing economies – Brazil and Russia – trimmed interest rates by a total of 75 bps in April, the first time the \u200cmonthly \u2060tally of cuts has fallen below 100 bps in a year. Of the other 11 to hold rate meetings, 10 kept rates unchanged.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, policy makers in the Philippines delivered a rate hike to keep a lid on rising inflation. Latest inflation data from the country blew past all expectations while its currency – like others in Asia – has flirted with or \u200bhit fresh record lows, cementing \u200ba view that more \u2060tightening is on the cards.<\/p>\n
Emerging economies, which often have higher shares of their inflation basket exposed to energy and food, are expected to feel price pressures more keenly. However, analysts \u200bpoint to a better starting point for many than in recent crises, such as \u200bCOVID-19 or \u2060Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n
“Monetary policy now is at not only positive levels, but there is plenty of room for central banks to ease if they need to ease, which is quite different than the policy levels versus inflation \u2060levels that \u200bwe had on the last global shock,” said Carlos Carranza, from the \u200bM&G emerging market debt team.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Reporting by Karin Strohecker and Sumanta Sen, editing by Dhara Ranasinghe and Alexander Smith<\/p>\n
Disclaimer:\u00a0The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and\/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) – The \u200bIran war has seen major central banks put interest rates on hold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[1514,1503,1507,1509,1502,1512,1505,1504,1858,1506,687,1493,1513,6,1492,1515,1499,1516,1501,1496,1497,1495,1498,46,1500,1511,1517,1494,1510,1508],"class_list":{"0":"post-33267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-european-central-bank","8":"tag-bank-forecasts","9":"tag-bitcoin-news","10":"tag-central-banks","11":"tag-charts","12":"tag-crypto-news","13":"tag-currency","14":"tag-economic-reports","15":"tag-ethereum-news","16":"tag-european-central-bank","17":"tag-forecasts","18":"tag-global-economy","19":"tag-gold","20":"tag-international-policy","21":"tag-interviews","22":"tag-kitco-news","23":"tag-market-nugget","24":"tag-metals","25":"tag-mining-minutes","26":"tag-mining-news","27":"tag-palladium","28":"tag-pgm","29":"tag-platinum","30":"tag-platinum-group-metals","31":"tag-politics","32":"tag-precious-metals","33":"tag-rare-earth-metals","34":"tag-roundups","35":"tag-silver","36":"tag-tech-metals","37":"tag-us-dollar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}