The DAP chairman said BNM had “no reason” to pause the OPR hikes in January and March, when the inflation rate was higher, and increase the OPR this month, when core inflation had been “slowly reined in”.

“Despite BNM not hiking the OPR in January and March, both headline inflation and core inflation dropped to a 34-month low of 3.4% and 3.8% respectively in March.

“The hikes in OPR have benefitted no one except the banks,” he said in a statement today.

Lim said analysts at Hong Leong Investment Bank Bhd had estimated that an OPR hike of 25 basis points (bps) would nudge up the banks’ net profit by 3.7%, or slightly more than RM1 billion, to RM30.07 billion from RM28.99 billion forecasted earlier.

“Have the banks not earned enough?” he asked.

On May 3, BNM raised the OPR by 25bps from 2.75% to 3%. It had earlier paused its rate hike cycle in January and March after raising it by 100bps or 1% last year as inflation surged following the Covid-19 pandemic and in the aftermath of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

In its statement announcing May’s OPR hike, BNM stressed that its monetary policy stance remained consistent with the outlook of domestic inflation and growth.