Norway's Norges Bank kept rates on hold at 4.50% on Thursday, noted Societe Generale.

This wasn't a major surprise following the re-acceleration of inflation in February, but Norway's central bank is still confident that rates will come down later this year, wrote SocGen in a note to clients.

The forecast profile was raised out to 2027 and the policy rate now stays above 3% over the horizon. The path was raised to 4.21% for end 2025 from 3.80%, end 2026 to 3.42% from 3.16% and end 2027 to 3.11% from 2.91%.

Headline inflation was revised up for this year to 3.0% from 2.6%, the underlying CPI-ATE to 3.4% from 2.7%. Wages were revised up by 0.3pp for 2025 to 4.5% and for 2026 to 4.0%.

The Committee judges that a restrictive monetary policy is still needed to bring inflation down to target within a reasonable time horizon, stated the bank. The uncertainty surrounding the outlook is greater than normal, and the future path of the policy rate will depend on economic developments.

The korne (NOK) strengthened on the policy decision, added SocGen. Support for EUR/NOK is located at 11.28/11.25 and for USD/NOK at 10.38.