On Wednesday, February 6, the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, made an unexpectedly mild speech, while investors were awaiting statements about raising interest rates. This caused the sale of the Australian currency.
In a speech titled "Next Chapter," he pointed out that the increase in interest rates of the US Federal Reserve and other large central banks does not have automatic consequences for Australia.
The official also noted that the flexible rate of the Australian dollar gives the RBA considerable time independence for the implementation of domestic policy.
In addition, high mortgage arrears means that consumer consumption may decrease due to higher rates.
P. Lowe said that the RBA is not aimed at conducting fine-tuning of monetary policy. According to him, the state of the country's economy is improving, but there are still risks, noting that the surge in investment activity in the mining industry is gradually subsiding.
The head of the regulator believes that in order to raise real income per capita, it is necessary to increase productivity.
After the speech of the head of the RBA, the Australian dollar against the US dollar as of 16:30 Moscow time fell by 1.44% to 0.7130, the minimum since January 21 against the euro by 1.27%.