NEWS

Norway’s central bank kept its key interest rates unchanged, setting policy makers up for the first tightening in seven years next month.

The bank on Thursday held its benchmark at a record low of 0.5 percent, as anticipated by all analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

“The outlook and the balance of risks do not appear to have changed substantially since the June report,” Norges Bank Governor Oystein Olsen said in a statement.

Policy makers in Oslo are preparing for the first rate increase since 2011, moving along with a global unwinding of the stimulus unleashed in the wake of the financial crisis. A record bout of monetary and fiscal stimulus has put the economy back on its feet after western Europe’s largest crude exporter endured the worst oil industry slump in a generation.