MEXICO CITY, Jan 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Mexico registered inflation of 4.83
percent for 2018, still above the central bank’s target despite a downward
trend for the year, according to official data released Wednesday.
The central bank has steadily raised interest rates to an all-time high in
a bid to bring inflation within its target range of two to four percent.
The key interest rate in Mexico, Latin America’s second-largest economy
after Brazil, currently stands at 8.25 percent, a level it also reached
during the 2008 financial crisis.
The annual inflation rate fell last year from a starting point of 6.77
percent. But it ticked up at the end of the year, after coming in at 4.72
percent in November.
Analysts polled by the central bank forecast inflation of 3.89 percent for
2019.
But the bank has warned that political uncertainty caused by the new
administration of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an anti-
establishment leftist, could complicate the outlook for the economy.