Bank of Canada discussed raising rates at latest policy meeting -governor

(Reuters) – The governing council of the Bank of Canada discussed raising interest rates at its policy meeting earlier this week before deciding to leave them on hold, the central bank’s governor, Tiff Macklem, said on Friday.

Asked whether any council members were in favor of hiking rates at the meeting, Macklem said: “When I say that we’ve discussed whether we’ve done enough, that does imply that one of the things we discussed is whether we need to raise rates.”

Macklem spoke to reporters from Washington where he was attending the annual International Monetary Fund meetings.

On Wednesday, the Canadian central bank kept its benchmark interest rate at 4.50%, as expected, but struck a hawkish tone, playing down market expectations for a rate cut this year as the risk of a recession diminished.

Macklem reiterated on Friday that interest rates may need to stay “higher for longer” to get inflation back to the central bank’s 2% target.

Asked about quantitative tightening, Macklem said rate cuts would not be a barrier to shrinking the central bank’s balance sheet so long as the purpose was to normalize rates, or move them closer to a neutral setting, rather than stimulate the economy.

The central bank estimates the neutral interest rate — one that neither stimulates nor constrains the economy — to be a range between 2% and 3%.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer and Fergal Smith; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)