SYDNEY, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Australia's central bank on Tuesday decided to keep interest rates on hold after inflation ticked upwards in October.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said in a statement that its Monetary Policy Board voted unanimously to keep the cash rate target unchanged at 3.60 percent at its final meeting of 2025 on Tuesday.
It said that inflation has fallen substantially from its peak in 2022, but has picked up more recently.
The latest official figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics late in November showed that Australia's annual rate of inflation rose from 3.6 percent in September to 3.8 percent in October, while the annual trimmed mean, the RBA's preferred measure of underlying inflation, rose to 3.3 percent.
"The recent data suggest the risks to inflation have tilted to the upside, but it will take a little longer to assess the persistence of inflationary pressures," the Monetary Policy Board said in its decision statement.
It said that the data suggested signs of a broadly based pick-up in inflation that will bear close monitoring.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported that the decision to keep the cash rate target unchanged was widely expected.
The RBA cut the key interest rate by 0.25 percentage points three times between February and August from 4.65 percent, where it had remained unchanged since November 2023. ■
