South Africa’s consumer price index (CPI) inflation data for April, due for release on Wednesday, is expected to show a year-on-year (y-o-y) increase, the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) has reported.
Quoting Bloomberg, the Bureau said “the consensus is for headline CPI to have ticked notably higher to 4.3% y-o-y, up from 3.2% in March”.
In its latest Weekly Review, the BER said that as in the US, the faster annual rise would, at least partly, be driven by low base effects from the same month last year”.
Because of the rise in inflation, the SA Reserve Bank is expected to keep the repo rate where it is when the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) concludes its latest interest rate meeting on Thursday.
“Along with the market consensus, we expect the MPC to keep the policy interest rate unchanged at a multi-decade low of 3.5%.
“As in March, we expect the five-member MPS to be unanimous in their decision. We are interested to see if the statement that accompanies the rate decision spends more time on outlining the MPC’s thoughts on rising input costs and the possible pass-through thereof into consumer prices,” the Bureau said.