YEREVAN, 11 June. /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia expects inflation at the end of the year to be within 2.2-2.5 per cent, Chairman of the Central Bank Martin Galstyan said today.
“The inflation now is in the so-called “positive territory”, i.e. above zero. At the end of the year it will be higher and will approach 2.2-2.5 per cent depending on the developments in agriculture,’ Galstyan told a press conference on Tuesday after the regulator lowered the refinancing rate by another 0.25 percentage point to 8 per cent.
He said inflation would thus be close to the projected target range.
“When the Central Bank forecasts that inflation will be higher, it plans to bring the rate to the target range in the medium term. Why do I emphasise the medium term? Because if we set the task to bring inflation to the target level of 4% in the current year, we can do it, but for the economy the price of this may be indescribably large,’ the Central Bank chairman said.
Based on this, Galstyan noted that the target inflation rate of 4% is expected in 2025. The government’s inflation forecast for 2024 is (±1.5%). -0-
