By Aida Pelaez-Fernandez<\/p>\n
MEXICO CITY, May 7 (Reuters) – Mexico’s annual headline inflation rate decelerated in April for the first time since December, official \u200cdata showed on Thursday, opening the door for the central bank \u200cto cut its benchmark interest rate later in the day.<\/p>\n
Consumer prices in Latin America’s second-largest \u200beconomy rose 4.45% in the year through April, easing from March’s 4.59% increase and below the 4.50% increase forecast by economists polled by Reuters.<\/p>\n
The closely watched core index, which strips out some volatile food and energy prices, also slowed \u200cto 4.26% from 4.45% in \u2060March and slightly below expectations of a 4.27% increase.<\/p>\n
The dip in inflation “gives policymakers at the central bank room to deliver \u2060one final 25-basis-point rate cut in the cycle,” William Jackson, chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics said, pointing out that the Bank of Mexico will \u200balso likely \u200bconsider Mexico’s sluggish economy in its decision. \u200bThe Mexican economy shrunk 0.8% \u200cin the first quarter.<\/p>\n
The central bank, also known as Banxico, is scheduled to announce its monetary policy decision later on Thursday after an unexpected 25-basis-point cut in March, which brought its benchmark interest rate down to 6.75%.<\/p>\n
The market expects Banxico on Thursday to end the monetary easing cycle that began over \u200ctwo years ago with a final cut \u200bto the benchmark rate.<\/p>\n
Despite the recent easing, \u200binflation remains well above the \u200bcentral bank’s target of 3%.<\/p>\n
“Banxico’s potential rate cut aims to \u200cprovide a boost to an economy \u200bthat is growing by \u200bjust 1.4% this year,”, CopKapital analysts said in a note.<\/p>\n
In April alone, consumer prices rose 0.20% from the month before, according to non-seasonally \u200badjusted figures, below economists’ \u200cexpectations of a 0.25% hike, while core prices rose 0.31%, in \u200bline with market forecasts.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Ricardo Figueroa; Editing \u200bby Toby Chopra and Susan Fenton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aida Pelaez-Fernandez MEXICO CITY, May 7 (Reuters) – Mexico’s annual headline inflation rate decelerated in April for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":780910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,22703,79,26049,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-780909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-central-bank","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-headline-inflation","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116536427712114312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780909","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=780909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}