Minutes of the Monetary Policy Meeting held on 23 November 2022

The members noted that global inflation remains high and that central banks around the world are therefore raising their policy rates. In Sweden, inflation has been lower than the Riksbank’s forecast from the monetary policy meeting in September. But excluding energy prices, inflation has instead been unexpectedly high, which indicates that inflationary pressures are higher and the Riksbank's forecast for underlying inflation has been revised upwards.

The members agreed unanimously that the policy rate needs to be raised more than they assessed in September to bring inflation back to the target and they all supported the decision to raise the policy rate by 0.75 percentage points to 2.5 per cent. It was pointed out that although long-term inflation expectations have been relatively stable so far, there is still a considerable risk that the high inflation will become embedded in expectations and lead to a weakening of confidence in the inflation target. A high rate of inflation over a long time can create serious problems for the real economy and the members emphasised that by raising the policy rate more now, the risk of high inflation over a long time is reduced and thus the risk of even more monetary policy tightening further ahead.

All of the members supported the forecast that entails the policy rate probably being raised further at the beginning of next year to just under 3 per cent. However, the members emphasised that there was considerable uncertainty regarding the development of inflation. This makes it difficult to assess how much the policy rate needs to be raised to bring inflation back to the target. The members were careful to emphasise that monetary policy will be adapted in the way necessary to ensure that inflation reaches 2 per cent within a reasonable time.