Sydney: The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on Tuesday decided to keep its key interest rate unchanged at 3.60% for the third consecutive meeting, at its final policy gathering of 2025.

According to Qatar News Agency, the RBA's Monetary Policy Board voted unanimously to maintain the cash rate target at 3.60%, indicating that while inflation has declined significantly from its 2022 peak, recent data suggest renewed upward pressures. "The recent data suggest the risks to inflation have tilted to the upside, but it will take more time to assess the persistence of inflationary pressures," the Board stated.

The Board added that data indicate signs of a broadly based pick-up in inflation, which will be closely monitored in the coming period. Latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in late November showed that Australia's annual inflation rate rose to 3.8% in October, up from 3.6% in September, while the annual trimmed mean, the RBA's preferred measure of underlying inflation, increased to 3.3%.

The RBA reduced the cash rate by a cumulative 0.75 percentage points through three cuts between February and August, from 4.65%, where it had remained unchanged since November 2023.