By Xinhua,
Canberra : Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned home buyers on Tuesday that the fight against inflation was still going on, just because official interest rates hadn’t changed for three months.
Rudd told parliament that tackling inflation was like a “15-round fight” and it was going to go for a long time.
Australia faced a long-term fight against inflation, a challenge other governments around the world were also facing with global oil and food prices rising, he said.
In the parliament speech, Rudd also welcomed the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) decision to leave the official cash rate unchanged.
The RBA’s decision to leave the cash rate at a 12-year high of 7.25 percent was widely expected by economists, given there are signs of a sharp slowdown in economic growth.
The RBA has raised the cash rate four times since August as it tries to curb ballooning price pressures which have lifted underlying inflation to a 16-year high of 4.25 percent, way outside the central bank’s two to three percent target.