SSA Monetary Policy in 2021: Will The Dovish Way Be Sustained?

Friday, January 22, 2020/ 01:00PM / United Capital Research / Header Image Credit:  Brand Spur

In the light of apparent fiscal policy limitations, and in a bid to keep the economy running in the wake of the global pandemic, government authorities used the monetary policy measures available to them to salvage their economies from the potential damage of the Covid-19 outbreak while the government focused on providing health care services and other forms of fiscal support to their economies.

Monetary policy took centre stage in many economies as central banks moved to provide emergency support facilities while adopting a broadly loose policy stance in line with global realities. Looking through the spectrum, reductions in policy rate was as high as 500bps in S/Sudan and Zambia, close to 300bps in S/Africa and the Rand Zone, 200 bps in Uganda, 150 bps in Ghana and 200bps in Nigeria (accompanied by massive liquidity injection via OMO maturities. Other measures included direct facilities intervention to SMEs and businesses directly affected by the pandemic, moral suasion to banks to increase or implement a moratorium on existing credits to buffer job losses and limit the financial burden on corporates.

In 2021, we expect monetary policy actions to remain broadly accommodative to spur growth and limit the impact of the pandemic from evolving into a W-shaped growth outcome in the face of limited vaccination for Africans as well as fiscal policy vulnerability. We imagine that monetary authorities will further ease or maintain policy rates at current level till Q2-2021 to allow the economy to recover fully before contemplating tightening from Q3 -2021.

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Looking Forward

Angola

MPC Meeting-January 28th

Ghana

Dec-2020 PPI YoY-January 22nd

Dec 2020 MPC Interest Rate Decision=January

25^th

Kenya

Q3-2020 CPI YoY-January 29^th

Morocco

Dec-2020 Inflation Rate YoY- January 22^nd

South Africa

Dec-2020 PPI YoY-January 28th

Dec-2020 Money Supply YoY-January 29th

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