2021.06.1707:52:00UTC+00Swiss Central Bank Maintains Expansionary Policy

The Swiss National Bank decided to maintain its expansionary monetary policy in order to ensure price stability and provide support to the economic recovery.

Policymakers of the Swiss National Bank retained the policy rate and interest on sight deposits at the SNB at -0.75 percent.

The bank repeated that it is willing to intervene in the foreign exchange market as necessary, while taking the overall currency situation into consideration.

The central bank forecast consumer prices to rise 0.4 percent this year and 0.6 percent each in 2022 and 2023. The projection for 2021 was revised up from 0.2 percent and that for 2022 from 0.4 percent.

The bank expects Swiss GDP to return to its pre-crisis level by the middle of the year. The bank raised its growth outlook for this year to around 3.5 percent citing the lower-than-expected decline in GDP in the first quarter.