YEREVAN, August 11. /ARKA/. The board of the Central Bank of Armenia decided Tuesday to leave the current 7.25% refinancing rate unchanged, the central bank’s press office reports.
According to the report, deflation was recorded at 0.8% in July, compared with June, as the year-on-year inflation reached 7.8% by late July after growing by two percent, compared with the pervious month’s indicator.
The central bank’s board says that macroeconomic processes inside and outside of Armenia are in tune with the outlooks in the bank’s monetary policy program for the third quarter.
Along with that, experts at the central bank point out that outside inflation pressures intensified as the European currency revaluated at world financial markets and things worsened at some markets, particularly the wheat market.
“At the same time, the inside inflation environment keeps softening thanks to the lack of inflation pressures due to domestic demand and the monetary conditions that were tightened at the beginning of this year,” the press release says.
Taking into account the mentioned factors, the central bank thinks that after the year-on-year inflation growth due to prices for agricultural products in the third quarter, the inflation will be gradually subsiding to the predicted upper annual benchmark.
“Taking into account the mentioned economic processes and the ongoing uncertainty connected with the reaction of domestic prices to the above-mentioned outside factors as well as further change in prices for agricultural products, the central bank’s board finds it reasonable to refrain from tightening monetary conditions,” the press release says.
At the same time, the board doesn’t rule out the possibility of changes in the future, depending on the mentioned risks.
The refinancing rate has been raised five times since the beginning of this year by 5.0% percentage points to 7.25% – on January, 21, February 16, March 9 and April 13 by 0.5 points each time and by 0.25 points on May 11. -0–
