Armenia's Central Bank cut its refinancing rate by 0.25 percentage point to 6%.
The Central Bank began to gradually reduce the refinancing rate from the second half of 2015. As a result, it fell from 10.5% in June 2015 to 6.25% in December 2016. During this period, the regulator reduced the refinancing rate 11 times, including 8 times in 2016.
According to the regulator, the inflation in January 2017 was 2.6%, up from 2.2% inflation in the same month last year. As a result the 12-month deflation softened to 0.6%.
The Central Bank said it does not expect a significant inflationary pressure from external markets because the global economic growth is still slow, while inflation processes at external commodity markets have not changed.
The Central Bank said that achieving the projected inflation will slow down due to expectations generated by the low prices of some non-food items, as well as by a decline in gas prices since January and electricity since February, ARKA reports.
