Transcript of the questions and answers from the press conference

Could you please tell us a little more about today’s discussion, and more specifically whether any prevailing view or position emerged regarding the message of the new forecast, which implies that the key interest rate should not be raised any further? This appears to contrast fairly clearly with financial market pricing, which anticipates at least one and possibly two further increases.

It remains the case that we are keeping all options open. At today’s meeting, we did not discuss any scenarios for future developments. All members of the Bank Board had a fairly clear view of developments in the economy and inflation. We agreed that the rate increase at the previous meeting had brought about the desired tightening of monetary conditions and that the main strategy for us all now is a period of assessing new data, the outlook, inflationary risks and the effect of monetary policy restriction.

You said that you are monitoring the situation in the Middle East. Is this something you no longer regard as such a significant uncertainty? It played a fairly major role in the previous decision, so I would like to ask how you see it now.

Core inflation, which abstracts from the effects of commodity prices, played a role in the previous decision. We are therefore continuing to monitor the situation closely, but for now the current degree of tightness of monetary conditions is sufficient to keep inflation low. That is our assessment.