Ghana central bank's MPC split over rate decision, minutes show

ACCRA (Reuters) -Two of the five members of the Ghana central bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted for its prime interest rate to be kept at 27% during the last meeting, at which the bank hiked the rate by 100 basis points to 28%, minutes showed on Wednesday.

The split decision highlights diverging views within the Bank of Ghana's MPC over how aggressively to tackle inflation.

Announcing the surprise rate hike on Friday, governor Johnson Asiama said the tight monetary policy stance was needed to lower inflation.

Ghana's annual consumer inflation slowed for a third straight month to 22.4% in March from 23.1% the previous month, the country's statistics agency said earlier on Wednesday.

Asiama had previously warned that consumer inflation in the gold, oil and cocoa-producing West African nation remains "uncomfortably high" and above the bank's target of 8% with a margin of error of 2 percentage points either side.

(Reporting by Christian Akorlie Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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