Oliver Mangan: Inflation will ultimately decide the timing of the Fed's interest rate hike

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said current US interest rate hike projections should be taken with a "big grain of salt".

There were no major revisions made to the US Federal Reserve’s economic forecasts at its monetary policy meeting last week.

While the projections for growth and inflation were revised up somewhat for 2021, the 2022-23 forecasts were left virtually unchanged. Yet, there was a significant movement in the Fed’s interest rate projections, with a large majority of the Fed policymakers now believing that interest rates will start to rise in 2023 compared to 2024 at the earliest, previously.