The Bank of Korea holds at 3% but frames its next move as a hike, with September CPI at 2.9% and core at 2.8% still above target.

Central banks are converging on the short end of the curve as the instrument of policy. The Bank of Korea's shift to a tightening bias and the PBOC's move of its primary policy rate to the overnight repo both reprice a curve off a shorter tenor, one by threatening hikes, the other by anchoring the whole mainland curve to overnight money. The RBI is running the same lever in the opposite direction, draining less through its October 21 operations and returning on 22 October with a one-day variable rate repo for a notified amount in the tens of thousands of crore, so the call rate sits nearer the standing deposit facility floor than the repo cut-off. The Bank of Japan's balance sheet makes the stakes explicit: with Treasury discount bills at zero, its entire securities book is coupon JGBs, so any reduction falls straight on the yield curve. Where the sovereign is the borrower rather than the rate-setter, the same short-end logic shows up in supply — the Federal Finance Agency doubling a 2028 line rather than testing the long end, and Eswatini reopening six lines on 28 October to let clearing yields, not coupons, set its domestic curve.