The Central Bank Policy Rate is the interest rate that a central bank sets on its loans and advances to a commercial bank. This interest rate is used by the monetary authorities to control inflation and stabilize the country’s currency.

Data comes from the Global Macro Database (GMDB), further information about the variable can be found within https://www.globalmacrodata.com/documentation.html

The rate is annual and expressed as a decimal fraction per annum (0.0538 for 5.375%), taken at the end of the year rather than averaged over it.

Changed in v2.2.0: this used to be returned in percentage points (5.375 for 5.375%). It is now a decimal fraction, matching every other rate in the Finance Toolkit.

Also known as: policy rate, benchmark rate, base rate.

No programming experience? With the Finance Toolkit MCP server, AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT can calculate the Central Bank Policy Rate for you. Just ask in plain English.

Calculate the Central Bank Policy Rate in Python

The Central Bank Policy Rate is available in the Economics module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_central_bank_policy_rate as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Economics

economics = Economics(start_date='2021-01-01', end_date='2025-12-31')

economics.get_central_bank_policy_rate(countries=['Netherlands', 'Germany', 'United States'])

Which returns:

  Netherlands Germany United States
2021 -0.005 -0.005 0.0012
2022 0.0044 0.0044 0.0438
2023 0.0362 0.0362 0.0538
2024 0.0381 0.0381 0.0438
2025 0.0288 0.0288 0.0426

Parameters

get_central_bank_policy_rate accepts the following parameters:

  • countries (list[str] | str | None, optional): The countries to include in the data. Defaults to None.
  • rolling (int, optional): The rolling window size to use for smoothing the data (simple moving average). Defaults to None.
  • trailing (int, optional): The trailing window size to use for summing the data over trailing periods (e.g. a trailing-4-quarter sum). Defaults to None.
  • growth (bool, optional): Whether to return the growth data or the actual data. Defaults to False.
  • lag (int, optional): The number of periods to lag the growth data. Defaults to 1.
  • standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False.
  • rounding (int | None, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None.
Money Supply Short Term Interest Rate Long Term Interest Rate Real Interest Rate Yield Curve Slope Real Yield Curve (TIPS) Breakeven Inflation Expectations 30-Year Mortgage Rate

The Economics module page introduces the module, and the sidebar lists all of its functions.

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