AARAU, Switzerland (Reuters) – The Swiss National Bank has room to ease policy further to help rein in a Swiss franc that remains significantly overvalued, SNB Chairman Thomas Jordan told a financial conference on Monday.
“The National Bank has further possibilities to act expansively,” he said, noting inflation was set to creep back into positive territory by mid-2017 but this depended heavily on oil prices and the franc’s exchange rate.
His comments come after fellow SNB policymaker Andreas Maechler said last week that the SNB could drop interest rates further into negative territory. It now charges 0.75 percent on some deposits and aims to keep three-month rates around -0.75 percent while intervening when needed on currency markets.
(Reporting by John Miller, Editing by Michael Shields)
