The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will announce its Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) today (Friday) at Karachi headquarters.

The SBP’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is scheduled to meet today to decide about the monetary policy. Later on, the SBP will issue the MPS to announce the decision of the committee for the key policy rate.

Meanwhile, a majority of market participants expect no change in the policy rate. As per a poll conducted by Topline Securities, of financial market participants over the news on the upcoming monetary policy statement.

A total of 118 participants took part in the latest poll compared to 94 in January 2021, which was conducted for January 2021 MPS. Of the 118 participants, 82 percent expect no change in the policy rate in the upcoming MPS, as compared to the previous poll where 75pc of the participants were expecting no change.

Whereas, a poll conducted by Capital Stake indicates that 81 percent of the participants anticipate policy rate to remain unchanged at 7 percent while 19 percent expect rates to rise.

It is pertinent to mention that the MPC maintained the policy rate at 7 percent while announcing the previous monetary policy in January, and hinted that monetary policy settings will remain unchanged in the near term.