Fed's Williams says medium-term inflation trend "pretty favourable"

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams said on Monday that medium-term trends in inflation remain "pretty favourable," despite some recent soft U.S. consumer price data.

The U.S. economy continues to grow close to 2 percent, the unemployment rate is very low and job growth has been good, Williams said, adding that these conditions are likely to help inflation move up to 2 percent.

"We did see some soft data on inflation in the U.S. in the last couple of months. That seems mostly due to some special factors," Williams told reporters in Singapore on the sidelines of an event.

 

"We think it's always important to...look at medium-term trends and I still think those are pretty favourable," he said.

The Fed raised its benchmark rate in March for only the third time since the 2008-9 global financial crisis, and Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the current range of 0.75 percent to 1 percent is still delivering an accommodative boost to the economy.

With U.S. unemployment at 4.4 percent and job creation nearly twice what is needed to provide jobs for new entrants to the workforce, the economy is running "somewhat hot," he told Reuters last week.

(Reporting by Masayuki Kitano and Miyoung Kim; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)