This, in turn, may be explained by the low level of interest rates, which also contributed to credit to the private sector to accelerate further in January 1999 to 9.4% which is particularly notable as other indicators of the economy are signalling a slowdown in activity. Monthly data on monetary aggregates can be volatile.
M3 growth is therefore monitored on the basis of three-month moving averages of the 12-month growth rate of M3, which stood at 4.9% in the period from November 1998 to January 1999. This was 0.2 percentage point higher than the figure recorded in the previous three-month period and is 0.4 percentage point above the reference value of 4½%.