EUR/PLN likely to gradually rise through 2018, says Commerzbank

The EUR/PLN currency pair is expected to gradually rise through 2018, as the European Central Bank (ECB) continues with tapering and the National Bank of Poland (NBP) remains dovish, according to the latest report from Commerzbank.

NBP is scheduled to announce a monetary policy decision today and it is very unlikely that any interest rate or other policy parameters will be changed today. But, that does not mean that the meeting is simply a non-event.

CEE central banks are currently making significant changes to their assessment of the inflation outlook and such changes provide valuable clues about the timing of any rate hikes. The changes are made necessary by dovish surprises from inflation data around the eurozone. For example, the Czech National Bank had been far more hawkish until last month, but at the February meeting, it revised down its 2019 inflation forecasts and remarked that the timing of the next hike is uncertain.

In the case of NBP, Governor Adam Glapinski now signals that he would vote to keep rates unchanged through H1 2019 (extended from end-2018 guidance); he will probably emphasize this again today.

"Nevertheless, he is not the only policymaker – it would be interesting to see if even hawks are tempering their demand for rate hikes. The risk to our forecast of one 25 bps rate hike by NBP by end-2018 is to the downside – today's meeting will offer clues about this probability," the report commented.

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