Tonga policy interest rate
National Reserve Bank of Tonga policy rate — since the August 2025 Monetary Policy Statement, the conventional mid-rate of the NRBT Interest Rate Corridor (IRC), set by the NRBT Board of Directors in the semi-annual Monetary Policy Statement (published each February and August) under the National Reserve Bank of Tonga Act. NRBT Notes are issued to commercial banks at fixed rate/full allotment at this rate.
| Current value | 2 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2025-08-29 |
| Official source | NRBT — Monetary Policy Statement, February 2026 (approved by the Board of Directors, published 06 March 2026), Monetary Policy Stance and Policy Measures: 'Maintaining the NRBT policy rate at 2% and the Interest Rate Corridor (IRC) as follows: Policy Rate: 2% (mid-rate); Marginal Deposit Facility (MDF): 0%; Marginal Lending Facility (MLS): 4%' |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
CORRECTION TO THE LAUNCHING BRIEF: the brief anticipated that the NRBT operates no conventional policy rate and relies on the Statutory Reserve Deposit (SRD) ratio. That was correct until August 2025 but is now superseded, and the NRBT's own documents say so. The August 2025 MPS (published 29 Aug 2025) announced: 'New Monetary Policy Interest Rate Corridor. The NRBT announces that it will now adopt a conventional mid-corridor framework where its policy rate will be the mid-rate of the interest rate corridor (IRC) instead of the floor rate framework it employed in the past', and set 'a. Policy Rate: 2% (mid-rate) b. Marginal Deposit Facility (MDF): 0% (2% - 2% = 0%) c. Marginal Lending Facility (MLS): 4% (2% + 2% = 4%)'. Standing facilities sit at +/-200bps; the MLF is the overnight repo rate. The Feb 2026 MPS confirms the framework is operational: 'Implemented the interest rate corridor and set the monetary policy rate at a conventional mid-rate of 2%' and 'NRBT successfully resumed issuance of 7-day Notes in September 2025, after a 16-year discontinuation (since 2009)'. Stance at the Feb 2026 decision is NEUTRAL and data-dependent, 'with room to tighten if inflationary pressures persist, as core inflation remains high'. WHY THE LOOKALIKES ARE NOT THIS SERIES: (a) the Statutory Reserve Deposit ratio, held at 15 percent in both the Aug 2025 and Feb 2026 MPS, is an unremunerated reserve requirement, not a price of money — the Feb 2026 MPS explicitly diagnoses its failure ('Limited effectiveness of the Statutory Reserve Deposit (SRD). Reliance on the SRD has had limited impact on inflation or market rates... SRD adjustments work with long lags'), which is the stated reason the policy rate was created; (b) the Marginal Lending Facility / overnight repurchase rate of 4% is a ceiling standing facility mechanically defined as policy rate +200bps, not the policy stance; (c) commercial bank lending rates are not an NRBT instrument (the weighted average interest rate spread was 6.1 percent in Dec 2025); (d) the '5 percent reference rate' quoted throughout the MPS is the NRBT's INFLATION reference rate, not an interest rate. Transmission is still weak: excess liquidity is structural and, despite the 2% return on NRBT Notes versus 0% on ESA balances, 'uptake by some banks remains constrained by internal exposure limits'. Update cycle is semi-annual (MPS published each February and August), so ~180 days; there is no inter-meeting decision calendar. Access note: the NRBT MPS listing at /index.php/publications/publications/monetary-policy-statement.html returns HTTP 404 — the live listing is /index.php/eco-reviews/monetary-policy-statements, and the current PDF is served from a stable filename (NRBT_MPS_2026.pdf) that will likely be reused, so fetch the per-issue landing page rather than assuming a dated filename.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-01 | 0 | NRBT — Monetary Policy Statement, February 2025 (published 0 |
Get it programmatically
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# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/to/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/to/policy-rateOther Tonga series: VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates