KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Saturday announced the schedule of Monetary Policy Committee meetings for the rest of the Calendar Year 2022.

According to the SBP, in light of the emergency Monetary Policy (MPC) meeting held on April 7, 2022, the next regular meeting of the MPC is now scheduled for May 23, 2022. In line with the advance half-yearly calendar that the SBP has been announcing on a rolling basis since May 2021, the schedule for MPC meetings during the rest of the calendar year 2022 is envisaged. The MPC will hold five more meetings during the next eight months.

The next meeting of MPC will be held on Monday, May 23rd, 2022 for deliberation on key economic indicators to make a decision on key policy rates. As per schedule, MPC will also meet Thursday, July 7th, 2022, Monday, August 22nd, 2022, Monday, October 10th, 2022, and Friday, November 25th, 2022.

At emergency MPC meeting, SBP raises policy rate by 250 basis points to 12.25%

The advance calendar of MPC meetings for the first half of the calendar year 2023 will be shared at the time of the November 2022 MPC meeting.

For the current month, the MPC meeting was scheduled to be held on April 19, however, due to the rising risk to external accounts and inflation, the MPC held an emergency meeting before time on April 7 and decided to raise the policy rate by 250 basis points to 12.25 percent.

In May last year, the SBP introduced an advanced calendar of monetary policy committee meetings in line with the international practices and decided to announce a half-yearly schedule of MPC meetings on a rolling basis. The SBP believed that this is another step towards making the process of monetary policy formulation more predictable and transparent.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022