The end of higher interest rates is in sight – a different monetary policy narrative is still called for

The end of the current cycle of rising short term interest rates in SA that began in January 2014 is thankfully in sight.

Given the continued weakness of demand for goods and services, it will take the assumption of a more or less stable rand about current rates of exchange rates to bring inflation and forecasts of inflation in 2017 well below the upper 6% band of the inflation targets. The Reserve Bank model of inflation has reduced its estimate of headline inflation in December 2016 to 7.1%, from its May forecast of 7.3%.

The Bank, which was predicting a gradual decline in headline inflation in 2017, has maintained its central estimate of inflation in December 2017 at 5.5%. It has revised lower its already weak GDP growth forecasts. It is forecasting no growth in 2016 (previously 0.6% p.a) and an anemic 1.1% p.a. GDP growth in 2017 compared to 1.3% p.a estimated previously. Our own exercise in simulating the Reserve Bank forecasting model, using current exchange rates, has generated the following forecasts for headline inflation (see below). The Governor indicated that the Bank’s own forecasts were made with unchanged assumptions about the exchange rate, hence the slightly higher estimates of inflation.

 

combination of very slow growth with less inflation vitiates any possible argument for higher interest rates for now and hopefully for an extended period of time to come.

Should inflation sustain a downward trend and growth in SA remain well below potential growth, the case for cutting rates to stimulate growth will become irresistible in due course. Food prices off their high levels brought by the drought have already stopped rising (according to the June CPI) and so will help materially to reduce the rate at which prices in general rise next year. The chances have improved for a very helpful inflation and interest rate surprise in the downward direction.

These developments in the currency and capital markets beg a question difficult to answer, given the impossibility of re-winding the economic clock. Did the interest rate increases imposed on a fragile economy do anything at all to hold back inflation?

Given the global forces that have driven the exchange value of the rand and all emerging market currencies weaker, it is not at all obvious that higher interest rates have made the rand more attractive to hold or acquire. Nor will interest increases have done anything at all to have offset the impact of the Zuma intervention in fiscal affairs that made the rand such an underperforming emerging currency and bond market until recently. Indeed, by further slowing down growth, higher interest rates may have discouraged investment in SA and weakened rather than strengthened the rand, while clearly discouraging the credit rating agencies and investors in the RSA bond market, leading to higher long term interest rates.

Recent trends in the rand and other emerging market (EM) currencies are shown below. We show how the rand has made some gains against other EM currencies recently. We also show that after significant weakness in 2015, the rand in 2016 has now gained against the Aussie dollar and gained even further against sterling. The impact of the Zuma intervention in December 2015 and Brexit on the rand is indicated.

 

What must be conceded is the role of Reserve Bank rhetoric about interest rates – explained as being bound to rise given more inflation and inflation expected. So any reluctance to act on interest rates would have had the Bank accused of being soft on inflation – so undermining its independent inflation-fighting credentials. An essential distinction that needs to be made by the Bank is about the different forces that can drive prices higher. The difference between prices that rise because less is being supplied to the economy, and prices that increase in response to higher levels of demand that run ahead of potential supplies, call for very different monetary policy reactions. It is a vital distinction about inflation that the Reserve Bank very self-consciously has refused to acknowledge.

Inflation in SA has accelerated in recent years mostly because of the supply side shocks to supplies of goods and services and the higher prices that have followed. Exchange rate shocks have caused prices to rise independently of the state of domestic demand, as has the drought that reduced the local supply of essential foodstuffs. These inevitably higher prices have further discouraged demand. Adding higher interest rates to the mixture then depresses demand even further, without seemingly doing much at all to restrain the upward march of the CPI.

What the SA economy deserved and didn’t get from the Reserve Bank was a very different narrative, one that can explain why interest rates do not have to rise irrespective of the forces driving prices higher. That excess demand justifies higher interest rates; reduced supplies do not. And therefore why sacrificing growth, for no less inflation realised, is not good monetary policy. 22 July 2016

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