(Bloomberg) -- The Riksbank is likely to increase the pace of easing next week, as there is little indication that interest rate cuts so far have spurred the economic recovery the Swedish central bank is expecting, analysts at Danske Bank A/S said.
The bank’s team of strategists and economists now believe that officials will opt for a half-point cut next week, having previously expected them to continue reducing borrowing costs in quarter-point increments. The shift comes as economic data and surveys published in the past week have been disappointing, they said.
“As the Riksbank has conditioned its inflation forecast for 2025 on a growth recovery, growth indicators are quite important at this point,” the bank said. “There may be good reasons why household consumption and retail sales have not picked up yet, but the Riksbank corporate survey painted a bleaker picture of an economic recovery compared to the previous survey conducted in May.”
Danske Bank noted that while lower interest rates in theory should filter through to Swedish households relatively fast, as some 70% of mortgages have rates fixed on three-month periods, the average rate on outstanding loans only declined by 0.3 percentage points from April to September.
“Hence, it should not be surprising that we have not yet seen much of a recovery in household consumption,” the analysts said. “The effect is however likely to come through over the coming months, and this is also why we maintain a rather optimistic view of the economic recovery looking into 2025.”
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