The RBA Statement on Monetary Policy is coming up at 11.30 am Sydney time on Friday, 5 May 2023

  • 0130 GMT
  • 9.30pm US Eastern time on Thursday 4 May

The RBA's Statement on Monetary Policy sets out the Bank's assessment of current economic conditions, both domestic and international, along with the outlook for Australian inflation and output growth.

  • A number of boxes on topics of special interest are also published. The Statement is issued four times a year.

Via National Australia Bank, what they are watching:

  • Today’s RBA Statement on Monetary Policy (SoMP) is of keen interest, notwithstanding that Governor Lowe gave a speech following Tuesday’s rate rise, which emphasised factors such as high service sector inflation in other economies and a turn in some asset prices following the April ‘no change – specifically house prices (up) and the currency (down).
  • Depending on the assumption used for the AUD TWI in his forecasting round (we’ll be searching this out immediately) it could itself explain a one-decimal place lift to the mid-2025 core CPI forecast (e.g. from 2.9% in February to 3.0% in May?). In doing so, it could have created the tipping point such that a close call to not raise rates in April became a close call to raise them in May. If so, then we’ll know that the future path of the AUD is one factor that will have significant bearing on future policy decisions (amongst many others of course).

A snippet from the RBA website with the current cash and inflation rates. After today's SoMP the wait is on for the May meeting minutes ahead of the next policy meeting on June 6:

rba somp 05 May 2023