The U.S. Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate unchanged for the second consecutive time on Wednesday as was highly expected in the market.

Following a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee(FOMC), the Fed said in a statement that it decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at five-point-25 to five-point-five percent, the highest to be posted since 2001.

The central bank hiked its key rate ten straight times from March of last year before freezing it for the first time in 15 months in June.

In a FOMC statement, the Fed assessed that “recent indicators suggest that economic activity expanded at a strong pace in the third quarter and that job gains have moderated since earlier in the year but remain strong, and the unemployment rate has remained low,” adding that inflation remains high.

After the policy meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said “inflation has moderated since the middle of last year, and readings over the summer were quite favorable,” but he was quick to stress that “a few months of good data are only the beginning of what it will take to build confidence that inflation is moving down sustainably toward” the two-percent goal.

Wednesday's move maintains the two-percentage-point gap between the Fed’s rate and that of the Bank of Korea, which kept its key rate frozen at three-point-five percent last month.