Serbia's Central Bank Keeps Rates on Hold

07:11 AM EDT, 08/07/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Serbia's central bank (NBS) on Thursday said its Executive Board decided to key policy rate on hold, at 5.75%. It did not change the deposit (4.5%) and lending facility (7.0%) rates either.

When making the decision, the Executive Board took into account the fact that several factors together triggered accelerated growth in domestic prices of food, especially non-processed food, over the past months, wrote NBS in its policy statement.

This refers primarily to prices of some food inputs in the global market and adverse weather conditions so far in the year, together with depleted inventories of agricultural commodities from the previous year due to last year's drought. Oil product prices also increased in June, as the global oil price went up after the outbreak of the Middle East conflict.

Mostly as a result of the above factors, headline year-over-year inflation in Serbia stepped up to 4.6% in June, after slowing to 3.8% in May. The NBS estimates that annual inflation could continue moving around the upper bound of the target band (3%, more or less 1.5 percentage points) until the end of the year and slow "gradually" in 2026.

MT Newswires does not provide investment advice. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.