Phillips curve

The European Central Bank (ECB) still has "a long way to go" to tame inflation, its president Christine Lagarde said Friday, a day after the body announced its first interest rate cut since 2019.

The price of food in the U.K. rose at the fastest pace in 45 years last month in, keeping inflation above 10 percent for a seventh straight month amid a cost-of-living crisis that has fueled a wave of strikes by government workers.

British economic output declined for a second month in a row in April, weighed down by decades-high inflation, official data showed yesterday.    

Gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent in April after a drop of 0.1 percent in March, the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.    

This year "Serbia recorded the fastest growth in the last ten years despite adverse external conditions," Jovananovic told a presentation of the Central Bank's Inflation Report on Friday in Belgrade.

In the past three quarters GDP growth reached 4.5 percent y-o-y, he added.

U.S. central bankers are divided over how fast they will need to raise interest rates next year, given differences over the causes behind the low inflation and wage gains seen to date, according to a report released on Jan. 3.

The Central Bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 7.5 percent again on Feb. 23, raising concerns amid a continuing rise of inflation rates. 

It also kept its overnight borrowing rate at 7.25 percent and its overnight lending rate at 10.75 percent, according to statement on the bank's website.

Turkey's government has revised its economic growth forecast upward and vowed reforms to cut stubbornly high inflation, which has been defined as "one of the most challenging problems in the economy now," and to raise productivity. 

As I noted in my last column, almost all Turkey economists were expecting the Central Bank to cut its policy and borrowing rates at the Monetary Policy Committee rate-setting meeting on Feb. 24.

The Central Bank is not expected to change the interest rates in today’s last annual Monetary Policy Committee (PPK) meeting. Despite the expectation of a fall in inflation rates, markets are not predicting that the Central Bank will lower interest rates soon.