Washington-Sana
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced that global financial officials are concerned about rising inflation pressures but there are few fears that it will become runaway.
"We are in a somewhat more uncertain landscape now, but in advanced economies policy makers have the tools to deal with inflation, so there is not much concern that it is a fast train," Georgieva told AFP.
Nevertheless, finance ministers and central bank governors met last week in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and expressed concern, according to Georgieva, that the price increases were more than temporary.
Georgieva considered that "key emerging markets such as Russia and Mexico raised interest rates, which indicates that policymakers in these places are concerned enough to take action."
US Federal Reserve officials have indicated that they will begin to roll back the stimulus by reducing their bond purchases in the last few weeks of the year, but the benchmark interest rate is expected to remain at zero without an increase until 2022 at the earliest.
The Bank of England has so far left its stimulus plan unchanged but there were signs of opposition at its latest monetary policy meeting when two members of its rate-setting committee voted to halt bond buying as soon as possible to help cool inflation.
“Central bank governors are facing a very difficult balancing act because they cannot address fundamental supply shocks with monetary policy, but they have to respond to what is happening in the economy,” said Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, noting that failure to act to contain inflation threatens to undermine the credibility of central banks in combating it.