Ghana's central bank cuts key rate by 300 basis points as inflation eases
The Bank of Ghana had been widely anticipated to reduce the rate by 200 basis points to 26%, according to a Reuters poll of 10 analysts.
"The committee noted that macroeconomic conditions have significantly improved. Inflation expectations are broadly anchored... and confidence in the economy is returning," governor Johnson Asiama, told a news conference.
Asiama added that inflation risks are expected to be mitigated through appropriately managed monetary policy frameworks and ongoing fiscal consolidation efforts.
"Given these considerations, the MPC, by a majority decision, voted to lower the monetary policy rate by 300 basis points to 25%," he said.
Last month, consumer inflation dropped to 13.7% from 18.4% in May, reaching the lowest level since December 2021.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
10 minutes ago
- Reuters
Japan's real wage falls for sixth straight month in June
TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan's real wages fell in June for the sixth consecutive month as inflation continued to outpace pay growth, government data showed on Wednesday, raising concerns about consumption-led recovery in the world's fourth-largest economy. Inflation-adjusted real wages, a key determinant of households' purchasing power, fell 1.3% in June from a year earlier, following a revised 2.6% drop in May. While June's drop in real wages was the slowest since January, it highlights broader pressures on consumption. Core inflation has exceeded the Bank of Japan's (BOJ) target, potentially giving the central bank leeway to raise interest rates as it unwinds years of loose monetary policy, but factors such as geopolitics and tariffs are looming economic risks. The consumer inflation rate the ministry uses to calculate real wages, which includes fresh food prices but not rent costs, rose 3.8% year-on-year in June, the lowest in seven months. Although special payments grew by 3% in June from the previous year due to summertime bonuses, they failed to keep up with a rise in inflation, a labour ministry official said. Total cash earnings, or nominal pay, increased 2.5% to 511,210 yen ($3,476) in June, picking up pace from a revised 1.4% rise in May and the fastest rise in four months. Regular pay, or base salary, rose 2.1% in June, while overtime pay edged up 0.9%. Major Japanese firms on average agreed to pay hikes of more than 5% during annual spring wage talks. The labour ministry had said previously the result may not be significantly reflected in the wage statistics until summer. Smaller firms, which lack labour unions, are slower to implement pay hikes compared with larger corporations. Wage trends, crucial to sustaining the momentum in consumption, are among key factors the BOJ is monitoring to determine the timing of the next rate hike. The BOJ last week kept its short-term interest rate steady at 0.50%, and said Japan will see rising wages and prices push underlying inflation towards the central bank's 2% target. At the same time, the central bank downgraded its assessment of consumption for the first time since March last year, and warned it would stagnate for the time being, squeezed by higher prices. A labour ministry panel on Monday proposed a 6% increase in the national average minimum wage for this fiscal year, the biggest such jump since at least 2002. ($1 = 147.0800 yen)
Reuters
6 hours ago
- Reuters
Ethiopian Airlines' annual revenue rises as it draws more passengers, adds routes
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Ethiopian Airlines' revenue rose 8% in the 2024/25 financial year, helped by higher passenger numbers and additional routes although it faced challenges on some routes due to conflicts, Chief Executive Mesfin Tasew Bekele said on Tuesday. The state-owned carrier, Africa's biggest airline, saw passenger numbers increase by 11% to 19 million in the financial year that ended July 7, Mesfin told a press conference. Revenue rose 8% from a year earlier to $7.6 billion, but growth slowed from the 15% recorded in 2023/24. "It was a good performance despite global challenges," Mesfin said, citing conflicts in Sudan, the Middle East and Democratic Republic of Congo. He added that some law changes in the United States had affected the airline's operations there. Ethiopian has a fleet of more than 150 aircraft. On Saturday, it took delivery of its fourth Airbus A350-1000 ( opens new tab plane. In June, Bekele said the airline was looking into the possibility of ordering at least 20 regional or small narrow-body jets as part of plans to expand its domestic fleet and replace some ageing aircraft. The airline is among several facing grounded aircraft due to bottlenecks in engine maintenance plants. Mesfin said the airline had added six new routes in 2024/25. Last year, it signed an agreement for the design of a new mega four-runway airport near the town of Bishoftu, around 45 km (28 miles) southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, which will be Africa's biggest airport when construction is completed in 2029. The airport will have capacity to handle 100 million passengers a year and provide parking for 270 aircraft.
Reuters
7 hours ago
- Reuters
Orange to use OpenAI's latest models to work with African languages
STOCKHOLM, Aug 5 (Reuters) - French mobile operator Orange ( opens new tab said on Tuesday it plans to use OpenAI's latest AI models with African languages. The benefits of AI models have largely bypassed African languages, numbering over 2,000, due to challenges such as lack of data and limited computational resources, according to researchers, opens new tab at Cornell University in the United States and a report by journal Nature. Orange, which provides telecom services in 18 African countries, signed a deal with OpenAI last year to get access to its pre-release AI models and fine-tune large language models to translate regional African languages. It said it started working with African languages this year using OpenAI's Whisper speech model, but the new models can extend this work to far more complex uses. OpenAI's first open-weight models have trained parameters, or weights, which are publicly accessible and can be used by developers such as Orange to tweak the models for specific tasks without requiring original training data. Orange plans to fine-tune the models with its collected samples of African regional languages and deploy them locally. "We plan to provide the fine-tuned models for free to local governments and public authorities," Orange's Chief AI Officer Steve Jarrett told Reuters. "We see this initiative as a blueprint for how AI can help bridge the digital divide: by collaborating with local startups and communities, Orange and OpenAI hope to catalyze an ecosystem where African languages are first-class citizens in the AI realm," Jarrett said.
