Kuwait Central Bank cuts repurchase rates by quarter point
One-week lowered to 1.5% and one month to 2%
Kuwait City: Kuwait's Central Bank cut its one-week and one-month repurchase rates by a quarter percentage point, a day after reducing its benchmark interest rate.
The one-week rate was lowered to 1.5 per cent and the one month to two per cent, according to data posted on the central bank website yesterday. The overnight repo rate remained unchanged. The one-week and one-month rates were last cut in July 2009.
The central bank on Sunday reduced its discount rate by half a percentage point to 2.5 per cent.
Conducive
That cut, the sixth since October 2008, aimed "to provide an atmosphere conducive to the growth of non-oil sectors in the local economy by reducing the cost of lending," Central Bank Governor Shaikh Salem Abdul Aziz Al Sabah said, according to the state-run KUNA news agency. The last reduction in that rate was on May 13.
Kuwait's economy is estimated to have contracted 1.5 per cent last year, compared with a 6.3 per cent expansion in 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. Oil prices peaked at more than $147 (Dh539) a barrel in July 2008 and fell to a low of about $34 a barrel in December of the same year. Oil now trades at about $72 a barrel.
