Central Bank Policy Rate
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.
With period=”daily”, “weekly” or “monthly” the rates come from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) instead, without an API key. It publishes the policy rates of around fifty central banks daily, including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (as “Euro Area”), the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, some back to the 1940s. Weekly and monthly take the rate on the last day of each period, so the current week or month shows the rate so far.
The result is a decimal fraction (0.05375 for 5.375%), like every other rate in the Finance Toolkit.
Also known as: policy rate, benchmark rate, base rate.
Central Bank Policy Rate in Python or via the MCP
Install the Finance Toolkit 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'], period='yearly')
Or, after setting up the Finance Toolkit MCP, ask:
What were the central bank policy rates for the Netherlands, Germany and the United States in each year from 2021 to 2025?
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 | 0.0356 | 0.0356 | 0.0438 |
| 2025 | 0.0213 | 0.0213 | 0.0362 |
Parameters
get_central_bank_policy_rate accepts the following parameters.
| Parameter | Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
countries | list[str] | str | None | The countries to include in the data. Defaults to None. | ["United States", "Euro Area"] |
period | str | None | Whether to return the daily, weekly, monthly or the annual data. Defaults to None, which is the daily data. | "monthly" |
rolling | int | The rolling window size to use for smoothing the data (simple moving average). Defaults to None. | 4 |
trailing | int | The trailing window size to use for summing the data over trailing periods (e.g. a trailing-4-quarter sum). Defaults to None. | 4 |
growth | bool | Whether to return the growth data or the actual data. Defaults to False. | True |
lag | int | The number of periods to lag the growth data. Defaults to 1. | 4 |
standardize | bool | Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False. | True |
rounding | int | None | The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None. | 2 |
gmdb_forecasts | bool | Whether to include the years the Global Macro Database projects, from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, up to five years ahead. Only applies to data from the Global Macro Database. Defaults to False, which ends a series with its last observation. | True |