Reuters polling of 40 economists for the meeting on June 21
- 40 said the Swiss National Bank will keep rates on hold
- SNB would stick with a target range of minus 1.25 percent to minus 0.25 percent for the three months London Interbank Offered Rate, as it has for the last three and-a-half years
- A negative interest rate of 0.75 percent on sight deposits held by commercial banks over a certain value - one of the tools used by the SNB to stem demand for the franc - is also expected to be retained,
More from the Reuters report:
- earliest change to the LIBOR target range was expected to come towards the end of this year, the view of UBS, while the median consensus was for the tail end of 2019
- Analysts at Credit Suisse thought the SNB could raise rates early in 2019, based on the strength of the Swiss economy, which they forecast to grow 2.2 percent this year. "Our base case scenario is where the ECB is considering a first interest rate increase themselves by mid-2019, and the SNB could move a quarter before," said Nannette Hechler-Fayd'herbe from Credit Suisse, who said the SNB would like to reaffirm its independence. "The two would then move alongside each other ... the two cannot completely decouple, they are so economically interlinked." She anticipated the SNB would raise rates very gradually, with the franc eventually reaching around 1.20 versus the euro in 12 months' time.
