Jay Powell said the Federal Reserve was looking at “keeping policy at the current rate for a longer time than had been thought” in the face of more persistent US inflation than expected.

Speaking at an event in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, the Fed chair said the US economy had been “performing very well lately” but the first months of 2024 had been notable for the “l(fā)ack of progress” when it came to bringing inflation down to the central bank’s 2 per cent target.

Powell said he expected inflation “will move back down on a monthly basis to levels that were more like the lower readings we were having last year” but “my confidence in that is not as high as it was”. He added the Fed needed to be “patient and let restrictive policy do its work”.