By Aida Pelaez-Fernandez<\/p>\n
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s headline inflation sped up in the first half of September, broadly in line with market expectations, heading closer to the upper limit of the central bank’s target.<\/p>\n
Banxico, as the central bank is known, is expected to further cut its benchmark interest rate 25 basis points later this week, but persistent inflation casts doubts on its path moving forward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Headline inflation close to expectations and core inflation slightly sticky \u2014 keeps Thursday’s monetary policy decision in play, but calls for a measured tone in future guidance,” said Felipe Barragan, research strategist at Pepperstone.<\/p>\n
Consumer prices were up 3.74% in the 12 months through mid-September, statistics agency INEGI said on Wednesday, speeding from a prior figure of 3.49%. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast an annual rate of 3.77%.<\/p>\n
The closely watched core price index, which strips out some volatile food and energy prices, kept picking up with a 4.26% annual increase in early September, from the prior figure of 4.21%, and landed slightly above expectations of a 4.24% increase.<\/p>\n
While the market expects inflation in Latin America’s second-largest economy to reach 3.9% by the end of the year, Banxico targets an inflation rate of 3%, plus or minus a percentage point.<\/p>\n
Despite inflation’s speed-up, “Banxico anticipates a further deepening of conditions that allow for slack (weakness in economic activity), which going forward would reduce inflationary pressures,” analysts at brokerage Monex said.<\/p>\n
Month-on-month Mexican consumer prices rose 0.18% during the first half of September, also accelerating from a prior decrease of 0.02%, and compared with a 0.19% rise expected by economists in the poll.<\/p>\n
The core price index kept picking up with a 0.22% monthly increase from the prior figure of 0.09%.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Ricardo Figueroa; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Marguerita Choy)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aida Pelaez-Fernandez MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s headline inflation sped up in the first half of September, broadly…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":251810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[133250,64,85091,79,27223,133251,26049,60354,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-251809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-banxico","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-core-inflation","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-expectations","13":"tag-felipe-barragan","14":"tag-headline-inflation","15":"tag-inflation-rate","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115260944809095381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}