Polish central bank likely going into wait-and-see mode after cut, governor says

By Karol Badohal

WARSAW, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Poland's central bank will probably move to a wait-and-see mode for a while now before making any further rate reductions, its governor Adam Glapinski said on Thursday, a day after cutting its main interest rate.

The reduction by another 25 basis points to 4.00%, in line with most analysts' expectations, came after a lower-than-expected November inflation reading.

The National Bank of Poland has now cut rates six times this year, by a total of 175 basis points.

"The outlook is good... I think the (Monetary Policy) Council will want to move to a wait-and-see approach to see how all the cuts we've made are working, and then proceed with further cuts," he said during a press conference.

"The current rate of 4.0% is perfect at this point. Whether we can go down to 3.75 or 3.50 depends on other council members... There definitely won't be any sudden moves."

He added that the bank needed to act with caution and that a high budget deficit limited the scope for further rate cuts.

Following the comments, the zloty briefly returned to Wednesday's closing levels at 4.226 against the euro, before backtracking to trade 0.15% lower at 4.2315 by 1557 GMT.

"(Glapinski's) comment that the Council could enter a wait-and-see mode before engaging in further rate cuts might have caught some investors off guard," Roman Ziruk, senior market analyst at Ebury, said.

"This should not come as a major shock, however. Most of the easing in this 'adjustment process' is now behind us, and we seem to be entering the fine-tuning phase, where the MPC moves with added caution and the importance of data is paramount."

The central bank targets inflation of 2.5% plus or minus one percentage point, and Glapinski said he expects CPI to stay in that range "in coming years".

A flash estimate from the statistics office showed inflation fell to 2.4% in November year-on-year, down from 2.8% in October and below the 2.6% expected by analysts.

(Reporting by Karol Badohal, Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Andrew Heavens)