According to the futures market, which has examined all the available evidence and laid the odds, there’s just under a 50-50 chance of another Reserve Bank interest rate hike at their next meeting in April.

The latest data supplied to the odds makers were the meetings from the RBA’s most recent meeting in March, when the rate was raised by 25 basis points to 4.0%. The minutes, like all the available economic data, seemed split fairly evenly down the middle.

Good economic points mentioned in the minutes, that could contribute to a possible rate rise in April, include improving credit availability for businesses, rebounding housing prices, and a simmering possibility that the Australian economy “might already have been running at or close to trend for a few months.”

On the side of leaving rates steady in April was the underlying inflation rate, which the central bankers anticipate to ease from its current level of roughly 3.25%, to close to 2.5% over the next twelve months. This is expected to coincide with a “moderation in private-sector wage growth,” read the minutes.

All of this the central bankers viewed against the backdrop of expected Australian economic growth “around trend rates over the next couple of years. International growth is expected “to continue at a reasonable pace with significant regional differences,” a trend that’s already visible in the accelerating growth in Asia and the slowing pace between Europe and the U.K.

One risk to the central bankers’ forecasts is the ongoing Greek sovereign debt problem, where the government faces serious difficulty in refinancing their outstanding loans. However, the RBA members didn’t view a full-fledged crisis as the likeliest outcome.

All in all, based upon the available economic data, the RBA decided “it remained appropriate to move gradually towards normal levels, and that it was timely to take another step in that direction” at the meeting in early March.

Leaving the futures market pundits, and homeowners and credit card users across Australia, no wiser regarding the central bank’s plans for April.

Source: http://www.businessday.com.au/