Lesotho policy interest rate
The CBL Rate — Lesotho's own policy rate, decided in Maseru by the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Lesotho at meetings held roughly every two months (six to seven a year, numbered sequentially). The MPC sets it to keep price stability, safeguard external reserves and, above all, defend the one-to-one peg of the loti to the South African rand, so the rate tracks the South African Reserve Bank repo rate closely but is not identical to it and is not set by the SARB.
| Current value | 6.75 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-05-29 |
| Official source | Central Bank of Lesotho — Statement of the Monetary Policy Committee, 29 May 2026 (119th MPC meeting), decision paragraph: 'the MPC decided to: Raise the CBL Rate by 25 basis points to 6.75 per cent per annum'; and 'The Committee considers this level appropriate as a modest interest rate differential of 25 basis points relative to the SARB repo rate of 7.00 per cent per annum. It is deemed enough to sustain the exchange rate peg and support domestic economic activity' |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
DIRECTION CHECK: this was a RISE of 25bps, not a cut — it ends a six-month hold at 6.50% (Nov 2025 to May 2026) and is the first CBL hike of the cycle. CMA CONTEXT: Lesotho is a member of the Common Monetary Area with South Africa, Namibia and Eswatini. The loti (plural maloti, LSL) is pegged at par to the South African rand and the rand is legal tender in Lesotho alongside the loti (the loti is not legal tender in South Africa). Serve this as Lesotho's OWN policy rate — the CBL sets it under its own mandate and the MPC papers frame the choice explicitly as a spread decision against the SARB: the 118th statement (27 Mar 2026) said the Committee thought it 'appropriate to maintain a modest negative interest rate differential of between 0 and 50 basis points relative to the SARB repo rate of 6.75 per cent', and the 119th moved the rate up to hold a 25bp gap below the SARB's 7.00%. Because the peg is the binding constraint, the CBL rate has never diverged far from the SARB repo rate, but it has been both below it and equal to it in the past two years. PRIME LENDING RATE: the CBL does not set prime; every statement's summary panel says 'Banks are expected to ensure that the prime lending rate is not more than the CBL rate plus 350 basis points', so the implied prime ceiling after this decision is 10.25%. EFFECTIVE DATE TRAP: CBL statements do not state a separate effective date and the CBL does not publish a dated rate-history table; the rate applies from the MPC decision. The date used here is the meeting/statement date, 29 May 2026. A SECOND DATE TRAP: the CBL website's post dates differ from the statement dates — the 119th statement is dated 29 May 2026 but was posted on 2 June 2026; the 117th is dated 30 January 2026 but posted 10 February 2026; the 115th is dated 23 September 2025 but posted 9 October 2025. Always take the date printed on the PDF, not the date on the listing page. RATIONALE FOR THE MAY 2026 HIKE: the Middle East conflict and the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz drove crude oil up nearly 50% since December 2025; Lesotho headline inflation rose to 3.1% in April 2026 and the medium-term forecast was revised up to 4.8% in 2026 and 5.0% in 2027; the SARB had just raised its repo rate to 7.00%. RESERVES: Net International Reserves stood at US$1,227 million on 19 May 2026, US$217 million above the NIR target floor, which the MPC raised to US$1,010 million at the same meeting (it had been US$860m from 30 Jan 2026, US$830m from 25 Nov 2025, US$840m from 5 Aug 2025). NEXT MEETING: the statement does not announce a date and the CBL publishes no forward MPC calendar; on the recent pattern (Feb, Mar, Jun, Aug, Sep/Oct, Nov) the next decision is due around August 2026. ACCESS: the statement archive at https://centralbank.org.ls/monetary-policy-statements/ fetches cleanly and the PDFs are text-extractable, but each listing page only links the PDF — the statement text is never in the HTML, so a watcher must open the PDF.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-06-03 | 7 | Central Bank of Lesotho — Statement of the Monetary Policy C |
| 2025-08-05 | 6.75 | Central Bank of Lesotho — Statement of the Monetary Policy C |
| 2025-11-25 | 6.5 | Central Bank of Lesotho — Statement of the Monetary Policy C |
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/policy-rate
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/ls/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/ls/policy-rateOther Lesotho series: VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates