CAIRO – 1 February 2023: The central banks of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have followed US Federal Reserve’s decision to raise their interest rates by a quarter of a percentage time.
Qatar, on the other hand, kept its interest rate unchanged.
The Central Bank of Egypt's (CBE) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is also scheduled to meet on Thursday to decide on the future of interest rates in its first meeting in 2023.
The CBE raised the interest rates by 300 basis points in December during its last meeting in 2022.
Fed raised its key short-term interest rate by a quarter percentage point Wednesday, throttling back from a half-point hike in December and acknowledging that a historic inflation spike is slowing, USA Today reported.
The Fed’s latest move brings the federal funds rate to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, up from near zero in March, in its boldest flurry of rate increases since the early 1980s.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 327 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 was down 0.4%. The Nasdaq Composite was about flat, boosted by gains in chipmakers after strong Advanced Micro Devices earnings, according to CNBC.
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