2018.09.2003:51:00UTC+00Swiss Central Bank Maintains Expansionary Monetary Policy

The Swiss National Bank maintained its expansionary monetary policy, as widely expected, on Thursday.

The interest rate on sight deposits at the SNB was retained at -0.75 percent and the target range for the three-month Libor was kept unchanged between -1.25 percent and -0.25 percent.

The central bank said it will remain active in the foreign exchange market as necessary, while taking the overall currency situation into consideration.

The bank repeated that the Swiss franc is "highly valued."

The central bank lowered its inflation forecast for 2019 to 0.8 percent from 0.9 percent and the estimate for 2020 was downgraded to 1.2 percent from 1.6 percent. The bank retained inflation forecast at 0.9 percent for 2018.

The SNB expects GDP growth of between 2.5 percent and 3 percent for the current year and a further slight fall in unemployment.