Commonwealth Bank of Australia preview the Reserve Bank of Australia September meeting, coming up on Tuesday September 5. The statement will be published at 2.30pm local time in Sydney, which is 0430 GMT and 2230 US Eastern time on Monday, 4 September 2023.
- the CPI indicator for July … showed annual inflation eased further, to 4.9% in July and down from 5.4% in June. There was further progress on goods disinflation. Food and softer holiday travel prices contributed to the easing. But the RBA’s concern is around services inflation. The CPI indicator, however, does not measure every item in the CPI basket each month; most services prices are collected in the latter months of each quarter, and further price increases are expected. The latest inflation data, together with the data on wages and unemployment, have generally undershot market expectations and are broadly in line with or weaker than the RBA’s own expectations. As such, there is no ‘smoking gun’ for the RBA to raise rates again at the September Board meeting, especially after having kept rates unchanged over the past two meetings.
- A deteriorating outlook for the Chinese economy will also likely mean the RBA are content to maintain their wait-and-see approach on rates.
- We expect the RBA to leave the cash rate unchanged, but in the post-meeting Statement to continue to discuss the case for a further rate hike.
As featured on the front page of the RBA website, the current cash and inflation rates.