{"id":23615,"date":"2026-02-11T10:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T08:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/zambias-central-bank-cuts-policy-rate-more-than-expected\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:23","slug":"zambias-central-bank-cuts-policy-rate-more-than-expected","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/zambias-central-bank-cuts-policy-rate-more-than-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambia&#8217;s Central bank cuts policy rate more than expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zambia&#8217;s Central bank cut its benchmark lending rate by a bigger-than-expected 75 basis points to 13.50% on Wednesday, saying inflation was projected to fall faster than it predicted at its last meeting in November.<\/p>\n<p>The median forecast in a<em>\u00a0Reuters<\/em>\u00a0poll of economists was for a 25-basis-point cut.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday&#8217;s policy announcement was the second rate cut in a row.<\/p>\n<p>Annual inflation fell to 9.4% in January, down from 11.2% the previous month, but it was still above the central bank&#8217;s target band of 6%-8%.<\/p>\n<p>The copper-rich Southern African country had been trying to stabilise its public finances, though a debt-restructuring process has moved slower than planned.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23616,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-23615","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"Zambia's Central bank cut its benchmark lending rate","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26528,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23615\/revisions\/26528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}