The Impact of Monetary Policy on Lending and Deposit Rates in Pakistan

Abstract

This study estimates the impact of monetary policy on lending and deposit rates in Pakistan, using bank data for the period November 2001 to March 2011. We find evidence of a long-run relationship between the lending and discount rate, but the deposit rate is not co-integrated, and the pass-through is not complete. The study finds that, overall, banks pass on only 20 percent of the impact of a change in the discount rate to lenders in the first month. There is also a significant difference among various banks’ pass-through rates. A shortrun analysis reveals that the pass-through of the deposit rate is low at 0.16, which implies that the effectiveness of monetary policy is limited in Pakistan