Bank of Canada Maintains Overnight Interest Rate, Eyes Future Economic Recovery

The Bank of Canada announced Wednesday it would maintain its goal overnight rate at 0.25%, noting optimism about economic recovery because of this of worldwide vaccination progress.  

The Bank of Canada rate of interest has been held regular since March 2020, when COVID-19 was first declared a worldwide pandemic. 

Cautious optimism

The Bank was cautiously optimistic in its release.

“The worldwide economy is recovering strongly from the COVID-19 pandemic, with continued progress on vaccinations, particularly in advanced economies,” the Bank of Canada wrote in a release. “Nonetheless, the recovery continues to be highly uneven and stays depending on the course of the virus. 

“The recent spread of recent COVID-19 variants is a growing concern, especially for regions where vaccination rates remain low.”

Quantitative easing 

The Bank also announced Wednesday it’s adjusting its Quantitative Easing (QE) program, lowering it from a goal pace of $3 million per week to a goal pace of $2 million per week.

QE is an unconventional type of monetary policy where a central bank purchases longer-term securities from the open market in an effort to increase the cash supply and encourage lending and investment.

What it means for mortgage shoppers

For mortgage shoppers, essentially the most significant news out of the announcement is that the Bank stays committed to leaving the important thing overnight rate unchanged until the second half of 2022, says James Laird, cofounder of Ratehub.ca and president of CanWise Financial. 

“This is sweet news for anyone who currently has a variable rate and anyone selecting between fixed and variable might lean more towards variable rates in light of this announcement,” Laird says. “Nonetheless, variable rates are only appropriate for consumers who’re comfortable with somewhat more risk. Anyone who puts quite a lot of value in rate certainty should still go together with a set rate. With the variable rate at a record low of 0.98% and the fixed rate near its record low at 1.74%, Canadians have two excellent options to select from.”

Laird notes the positive tone of the announcement, each in Canada and around the globe.

“Globally, the Bank is predicting higher oil prices and seven per cent year-over-year GDP growth. Inside our borders, the Bank is expecting to see an employment rebound within the hardest-hit segments of the labour market, which is able to help achieve their expectation of 6 per cent GDP growth,” he says. “The Bank notes some areas of concern including more contagious variants and inflation remaining above goal, nevertheless, the Bank continues to imagine that is a brief bump in inflation and expects it to moderate in early 2022.”

The central bank hinted that its overnight rate will likely remain unchanged until its inflation goal is achieved, and that there is no such thing as a Bank of Canada rate of interest hike on the near-term horizon.  

“We remain committed to holding the policy rate of interest on the effective lower sure until economic slack is absorbed in order that the two per cent inflation goal is sustainably achieved,” it wrote. “Within the Bank’s July projection, this happens sometime within the second half of 2022.”