The Bank of Canada has increased its benchmark rate by 0.75%, marking a fifth consecutive hike in its latest effort to get surging price growth under control.

The central bank’s move is its first three-quarter-basis-point jump of 2022, bringing its trendsetting policy rate to 3.25% – a full three percentage points above the rock-bottom level it occupied from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to March of this year.

Still, the increase was also a smaller hike than that contained in the Bank’s previous announcement, with that July 13 decision seeing an unexpected 1% jump to combat inflation that has been spiking ever upwards in recent months.

The Bank’s announcement means that the benchmark rate is now above the so-called neutral rate, the level at which economic growth is neither boosted nor constrained, which is currently between 2% and 3%.

The Bank of Canada has increased its benchmark rate by 0.75%, marking a fifth consecutive hike in its latest effort to get surging price growth under control.

The central bank’s move is its first three-quarter-basis-point jump of 2022, bringing its trendsetting policy rate to 3.25% – a full three percentage points above the rock-bottom level it occupied from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to March of this year.

Still, the increase was also a smaller hike than that contained in the Bank’s previous announcement, with that July 13 decision seeing an unexpected 1% jump to combat inflation that has been spiking ever upwards in recent months.

The Bank’s announcement means that the benchmark rate is now above the so-called neutral rate, the level at which economic growth is neither boosted nor constrained, which is currently between 2% and 3%.