Bahrain policy interest rate
The one-week deposit rate on the Central Bank of Bahrain's standing deposit facility. The CBB states explicitly on its Monetary Policy page that "The 1-week deposit rate is the CBB Key Policy Rate" — it is the designated policy rate, NOT the overnight deposit rate that CBB press releases headline. The CBB also runs an overnight deposit facility, a four-week deposit facility, overnight repo/secured lending and Islamic Wakalah/Commodity Murabaha equivalents. Because the Bahraini dinar is pegged to the US dollar at BHD 0.376 = USD 1 (effectively unchanged since 1980), the CBB has no independent monetary stance and moves its facility ladder in step with the US Federal Reserve.
| Current value | 4.5 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2025-12-11 |
| Official source | Central Bank of Bahrain — Facilities & Interest Rates, Standing Facilities (BHD) table read 24 Jul 2026: One Week Deposit Rate 4.500, O/N Deposit Rate 4.250, 4-Week Deposit Rate 5.000, O/N Repo Rate 5.250; the 1-week deposit rate is designated the CBB Key Policy Rate on the CBB Monetary Policy page. Level set by the CBB decision of 10 Dec 2025 (25bps cut effective 11 Dec 2025) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
SERVED VALUE IS THE ONE-WEEK DEPOSIT RATE = 4.50%, read directly off the CBB's own Standing Facilities (BHD) table at cbb.gov.bh/facilities-interest-rates on 24 Jul 2026. This is the rate the CBB itself designates as the Key Policy Rate (https://www.cbb.gov.bh/monetary-policy/, quoting the CBB standing-facilities document: "The 1-week deposit rate is the CBB Key Policy Rate"). THE MAIN TRAP: every CBB press release and virtually all press coverage quotes only the OVERNIGHT deposit rate, currently 4.25%, and headlines it as Bahrain's "key interest rate" — e.g. 'CBB Maintains Overnight Interest Rate unchanged at 4.25%'. The overnight rate sits 25bps BELOW the key policy rate; serving 4.25% would be serving the wrong instrument. Companion rates on the same ladder at confirmation: O/N deposit 4.250, 4-week deposit 5.000, O/N repo / O/N BD secured 5.250, O/N Wakala deposit 4.250, one-week Commodity Murabaha 4.500. HOW THE CURRENT LEVEL WAS SET: the CBB press release of 10 Dec 2025 announced a 25bps cut of the overnight deposit rate from 4.50% to 4.25% effective 11 December 2025 (https://www.cbb.gov.bh/media-center/cbb-cuts-overnight-deposit-interest-rate-by-25-basis-points-2/), mirroring the US Federal Reserve's December 2025 cut. The CBB moves the whole facility ladder together, so the one-week rate fell from 4.75% to 4.50% on the same date; effective_from is therefore 11 Dec 2025. Note the CBB does NOT publish a per-instrument effective date for the one-week rate — this is an inference from the ladder moving as a block, corroborated by the current 4.500 reading. Earlier 2025 steps (same pattern, overnight quoted): 18 Sep 2025 overnight 5.00% to 4.75% (one-week 5.25% to 5.00%), 30 Oct 2025 overnight 4.75% to 4.50% (one-week 5.00% to 4.75%). CBB has HELD at every 2026 decision to date — confirmed unchanged on 29 Jan 2026, 29 Apr 2026 (https://www.cbb.gov.bh/media-center/cbb-maintains-overnight-interest-rate-unchanged-at-4-25-3/) and 17 Jun 2026 — so 4.50% is the level at confirmation. ACCESS NOTE for the source-watcher: cbb.gov.bh/facilities-interest-rates renders the live table and is fetchable, but carries no 'as at' date label, so the effective date must be taken from the media-center press release, not the table. cbb.gov.bh cannot be opened in a scripted browser pane from this location (blocked by policy) but plain HTTP fetch works.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-10-30 | 4.75 | Central Bank of Bahrain press release, 10 Dec 2025 — 'CBB Cu |
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/bh/policy-rate
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/bh/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/bh/policy-rateOther Bahrain series: VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates