Mexico Holds Rates

Mexico’s central bank has elected to again hold interest rates at 4.5%, in line with expectations. Its post-meeting commentary leaves Barclays wondering, given monetary trends aimed at managing the economic slowdown, “what domestic and external conditions will need to prevail in order to adjust the monetary position.” Goldman Sachs points out that the bank again “maintained a broadly neutral bias” and kept its forward-looking paragraph the same, saying that “going forward the MPC will carefully monitor all the determinants/drivers of inflation, as their behavior may make it convenient to turn the monetary policy stance more or less restrictive, depending on the scenario that emerges.”