Riksdag Committee on Finance hearing on the Riksbank’s operations and monetary policy

Financial year 2025

Governor Thedéen began the hearing by noting that 2025 was an eventful year, characterised by great uncertainty in the global economy, partly due to the new US trade and security policy.

Mr Thedéen pointed out that the Riksbank took further steps during the year to strengthen preparedness in the area of payments.

“The Riksbank has fulfilled the legal requirement to operate five banknote depots. Work on enabling offline card payments also reached a milestone in July, when an agreement was signed with card payment and retail trade actors.”

In 2025, the Riksbank also introduced a deposit requirement, which means that Swedish credit institutions must deposit a certain amount in the Riksbank without interest. 

“The deposit requirement helped ensure that earnings covered administration costs by some margin in 2025, which strengthens the Riksbank's credibility and safeguards its independence,” said Mr Thedéen.

Mr Thedéen also added that the Riksbank's operations are taking steps forward in IT and digitalisation that facilitate its work. Among other things, the Riksbank has modernised its data and model management, partly with the support of AI. He concluded by noting that the general public’s confidence in the Riksbank had strengthened during the year.

“A high level of confidence helps the Riksbank’s monetary policy to have an impact, and it is important for our independence. Clarity, accessibility and transparency have been and will continue to be important to us in our work at the Riksbank.” 

Current monetary policy

The second part of the hearing focused on current monetary policy. 

Mr Thedéen said that the Swedish economy is in a good starting position. Inflation is close to target, interest rates have come down and the labour market has started to improve. At the most recent interest rate meeting at the end of January, the Executive Board assessed that a policy rate of 1.75 per cent would help to strengthen economic activity and stabilise inflation around the target in the longer term.

“The outcomes we have received since then point to a continued economic recovery, while underlying inflation may be slightly lower this year than in the previous forecast. However, recent developments in the Middle East underline that we live in a world of substantial geopolitical tension. The Riksbank is following developments closely. Before our next monetary policy meeting, we will also have received additional information on economic developments that we need to analyse to assess the outlook for economic activity and inflation," said Mr Thedéen.