March,23(Agencies)– A clutch of European central banks announce interest-rate decisions Thursday as markets remain jittery over turmoil in the global banking sector.
The Bank of England will join the Norwegian and Swiss central banks in revealing their latest moves on borrowing costs also in the face of stubbornly-high inflation.
All three are expected to lift rates, following the US Federal Reserve’s decision Wednesday to hike interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, or 25 basis points.
While the Fed said that “some additional policy firming may be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive” to bring down inflation, it added that the recent turmoil in the banking sector may help achieve that.
Recent banking sector developments “are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses and to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation,” the Fed said in a statement.
Kicking off the European announcements, the Swiss National Bank is forecast to raise rates by 50 basis points, matching the last increase in December that lifted borrowing costs to 1.0 percent.
It would come just a few days after the SNB joined other major central banks in boosting liquidity in the wake of the latest banking crisis.
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