Finance Ministry sees Russian inflation falling below 7% by end of Q1, below 6% by end-2016
MOSCOW. Nov 23 (Interfax) - Annual inflation in Russia could drop below 7% by the end of the first quarter of 2016 and below 6% by the end of 2016, Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Oreshkin said in an interview on TV channel Rossiya 24.
Annual inflation is now at 15.2-15.3%, down from 16.9% in March. Inflation was 11.7% in the period from the start of 2015 to November 16.
"The joint actions of the government in regard to fiscal policy and the Central Bank in monetary policy led to a situation where in the first quarter inflation was 7.5% for the three months, [but] already 1.1% in the second quarter and 1.8% in the third quarter, despite the fairly substantial weakening of the ruble that we saw at the end of the summer; in the fourth quarter we're also coming to about the same mark," Oreshkin said.
"Our forecast says that the annual change of inflation will be below 7% by the end of March, and by the end of the year we could easily go below 6%. In other words, inflation is under control. It was the actions that the Central Bank and government took in the past year that led to a situation where the surge in inflation that occurred due to an external shock and the decline of the ruble's real exchange rate turned out to be limited," Oreshkin said.
The Economic Development Ministry expects inflation to be 12.7-12.8% for 2015 and 6.4% in 2016.