{"id":34227,"date":"2026-05-11T14:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T12:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=34227"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:42:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T12:42:32","slug":"sas-central-bank-appoints-makrelov-as-new-chief-economist-mpc-member","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sas-central-bank-appoints-makrelov-as-new-chief-economist-mpc-member\/","title":{"rendered":"SA&#8217;s central bank appoints Makrelov as new Chief Economist, MPC member\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) said on Monday that Konstantin \u200bMakrelov had been appointed as its \u200cnew Chief Economist, replacing Christopher Loewald who took early retirement in March.<\/p>\n<p>Makrelov will also \u200bserve as a member of the \u200bSARB&#8217;s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and Financial \u2060Stability Committee, the central bank \u200bsaid in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>He joined the bank \u200bin November 2018 as lead economist, later becoming divisional head for economic and climate change-related \u200bresearch in January 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Before joining \u200bthe SARB, Makrelov spent 12 years at SA&#8217;s \u2060National Treasury, working on fiscal forecasting and the assessment of major government policies, including taxation and national energy programmes.<\/p>\n<p>The \u200bSARB&#8217;s MPC \u200bconsists \u2060of up to seven members.<\/p>\n<p>Makrelov will be the sixth \u200bmember of the committee.<\/p>\n<p>At its last \u200binterest \u2060rate decision in March, the MPC kept its policy rate at 6.75% \u2060in \u200ba unanimous decision.<\/p>\n<p>The SARB&#8217;s \u200bnext interest rate announcement is scheduled for May \u200b28.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15626,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-34227","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The \u200bSARB's MPC \u200bconsists \u2060of up to seven members.","published_date":"","news_description":"The \u200bSARB's MPC \u200bconsists \u2060of up to seven members.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34227","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":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34230,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34227\/revisions\/34230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}