YEREVAN, March 27. /ARKA/. Armenia’s Central Bank Board decided at a meeting today to keep the refinancing rate unchanged at 6%. The bank said in 2018 February 0.5% deflation was reported against 0.9% deflation in the same month of 2017. As a result the 12-month inflation at the end of 2018 February was 3.3%.
According to the Central Bank, under the impact of internal and external economic developments, the inflation rate in the coming months will remain with the permissible range of fluctuations.
The bank said also that amid the positive global economic and inflation trends in some commodity markets, it expects external demand to expand along with weak inflationary pressure.
The regulator believes that in the first quarter of 2018, economic activity slightly exceeded expectations due to high growth reported by industry, construction and services. It said domestic demand reported a higher than expected expectations, facilitated by the expansionary monetary policy and the growing lending to the economy.
It said at the same time that the additional inflation expectations that existed since the beginning of the year have significantly softened and, on the whole, have stabilized. All this in view, the Central Bank decided to leave the current monetary and credit conditions unchanged.
In March 2017, the Central Bank suspended the easing of monetary policy, setting the refinancing rate at 6%. -0-
