são paulobrazils central bank raised its benchmark interest rate wednesday and signaled multiple increases to come this year amid the uncertainty and risks to inflation caused by russias invasion of ukraine the bank raised its benchmark selic rate by one percentage point to 1175 leaving the lending rate at its highest level since 2017 the bank began the current tightening cycle early last year when the selic was at a record low of 2 and has now raised it at nine consecutive meetings the banks monetary policy committee known as the copom said it expects to raise the selic by the same amount at its next meeting adding that its ready to change the size of future hikes depending on the situation the bank also indicated they wont stop there the committee considers that given its inflation projections and the risk of a deanchoring of longterm expectations it is appropriate to continue advancing in the process of monetary tightening significantly into an even more restrictive territory the bank said in its statement policymakers are struggling to slow the pace of consumer price increases as the countrys 12month inflation rate has remained above 10 since september expectations that pressure on prices would start to ease early this year have been dashed by the impact of the war in ukraine on oil prices the price of crude oil jumped in the early days of the russian invasion of ukraine topping 135 per barrel for the first time since 2008 on march 7 the price has come down to below 100 this week but last week brazils statecontrolled oil company petróleo brasileiro sa raised its wholesale price price for gasoline by 19 and the price for diesel fuel by 25 fuel prices are a problem with that petrobras increase last week and food inflation is even more worrisome because its more spread out through the economy food is almost one quarter of the inflation index said caio megale chief economist at xp investimentos the problem with inflation in the short term is it exacerbates the economic growth situation going forward because of the impact on personal spending power