SAO PAULO Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem reiterated on Friday it is far too early to be thinking about interest rate cuts, adding that he expects the consumer price index to decline to around 3% this summer and back to the bank's 2% inflation target around the end of 2024.

"We have paused our interest rate increases... and we are using this pause to assess whether we have increased our policy rates enough to get inflation back to 2%," Macklem told a seminar hosted by Brazil's central bank via video conference.

(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo; editing by Jonathan Oatis)