At the latest interest rate meeting, the Swedish Central Bank chose to lower the interest rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.25 percent. It was the third lowering of the year after all the increases in the inflation shock of 2022-2023.
The Swedish Central Bank signaled in September that there may be a twice as large interest rate cut - with 0.50 percentage points - in November. But how it will actually turn out, Erik Thedéen does not want to speculate about two weeks before the interest rate decision.
It becomes very easy to discuss 25 or 50 points. But the big picture is that we have lowered three times and signaled for two more lowerings this year and maybe two more in the first half of next year, he says to journalists in connection with a seminar at the Swedish Central Bank.
"A genuinely difficult balancing act"
The view on the need for a double lowering differs among the members of the Swedish Central Bank's board, according to Thedéen.
It depends on it being a genuinely difficult balancing act. We have reasoned around it and there are also reasonings among analysts. I think it's completely in order, he says.
In the Swedish Central Bank's own prognosis from the previous interest rate decision - the so-called interest rate path - the probability of a double lowering is small. And according to Thedéen, the data published since then has largely been in line with the Swedish Central Bank's and the market's expectations.
This confirms quite a lot our prognosis, he says about Thursday's GDP indicator - which shows growth with higher service production and increasing household consumption.
Welcome quick-CPI
The new inflation figure from Statistics Sweden (SCB) last week - a so-called quick-CPI for September - was also within the framework of expectations, according to Thedéen.
He takes the opportunity to welcome SCB's decision to start publishing quick-CPI - a preliminary inflation figure five working days before the traditional one - which makes Sweden adapt to how it looks in large parts of Western Europe.
Of course, this will be important, among a lot of other important figures, he says.
