(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin said policymakers still have more work to do to tame prices after fresh data Wednesday showed inflation remained well above the Fed’s 2% target.
“I certainly think we are past peak on inflation, but we still have a ways to go,” Barkin said in a CNBC interview from Roanoke, Virginia, where the bank was hosting a conference. Barkin said he sees signs that demand is cooling, but said he was wary of declaring victory on inflation too soon, and noted that prices excluding food and energy were still too high.
“There’s still more to do I think to get core inflation back down to where we’d like it to be,” he said, but he stopped short of saying whether he would support a rate hike at the Fed’s May 2-3 policy meeting.
The Fed official made his comments after the March consumer-price report showed inflation was moderating. US consumer prices rose 0.1% in March, just below economists’ forecast of 0.2% and was up 5% from a year earlier. The closely watched core CPI number — which excludes food and energy — increased 0.4%, in line with the median estimate.
Most Federal Open Market Committee officials have emphasized that even amid the uncertainties created by the banking-sector stress, the Fed has more work to do to bring inflation down to its 2% target. Markets are pricing in the likelihood of an additional hike on May 3.
Barkin does not vote on monetary policy decisions this year.
Fed policymakers have been raising rates aggressively for the past year, including four 75 basis-point hikes last year. They had slowed the pace to a half-percentage-point move up in December and then a quarter-point increase in February. They repeated that smaller move at their March meeting, which came less than two weeks after Silicon Valley Bank and two other US banks failed.
The Fed will release minutes from the March meeting at 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
The consumer-price report will be among the last major reports the Fed gets before its next meeting. Among other reports, policymakers will also be able to review producer prices, import prices and retail sales data this week.
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