MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Bank of Mexico board member Jonathan Heath said in an interview published Wednesday he believed Mexico’s benchmark interest rate was at the correct level, and that the board did not want to raise it again, even if the U.S. Federal Reserve pursues future hikes.
Mexico’s central bank has kept the country’s benchmark rate steady since raising it to 11.25% at the end of March, while the Fed raised interest rates in the United States by a quarter of a percentage point in late July.
The Fed’s decisions have been “very relevant” to the central bank’s board, Heath said in a podcast interview hosted by Mexican bank Banorte.
“We already reached the rate we wanted as of the March meeting,” Heath said, adding the central bank now just needed to “wait for it to work.”
Banxico, as Mexico’s central bank is known, is scheduled to announce its next monetary policy decision on Aug. 10.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes Fernandez and Kylie Madry; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Sarah Morland)
