RBA April Minutes: A subtle dovish tilt - ANZ

David Plank, head of Australian economics at ANZ, suggests that their overall assessment of the Minutes from the RBA Board’s April meeting is that there has been a subtle dovish tilt.

Key Quotes

“This comes from the fact that in discussing the prospect of a rate hike “members agreed that the likelihood of a scenario where the cash rate would need to be increased in the near term was low.” Yet following the discussion of the easing scenario no probability judgment was offered. This is in contrast to judgment in the March minutes that “the probabilities around these scenarios were more evenly balanced than they had been over the preceding year.” We might be reading too much into this but we think the small change does matter.”

“But the RBA isn’t in any hurry to make a decision. Interestingly the Minutes set this out explicitly:

Members recognised that it was not possible to fine-tune outcomes and that holding monetary policy steady would enable the Bank to be a source of stability and confidence.

This suggests to us that the Bank will need a convincing case to ease.”