Azerbaijan, Baku, April 3 / Trend E. Ostapenko /
According to the expectations of the Kazakh National Bank, increasing the refinancing rate up to 7.5 percent together with the anti-inflation measures of the government will stabilize the situation in the consumer market, the bank's chairman Grigory Marchenko told Trend.
"Strengthening of inflationary pressure has been observed in Kazakhstan from early 2011," he said. So, inflation rate was 3.2 percent in January and February or 0.9 percentage points more than in the same period of 2010. Accelerating the inflation was connected with the increase in prices on food by 5,1 percent and paid services by 3,4 percent."
The annual inflation was 8.8 percent in February 2011 (7.8 percent in December 2010).
"It should be stressed that the major factor of the inflation is the imbalance between supply and demand in the economy," he said. It is associated not only with the situation in the domestic market but also with a low offer, primarily food in world commodity markets."
The National Bank has decided to raise the refinancing rate by 50 basis points up to 7.5 percent since March 9, 2011 within these conditions.
The National Bank did not change the official refinancing rate for a long time.
The National Bank began to reduce the official refinancing rate because Kazakhstan observed slowdown in inflation (from 20 percent in August 2008 to 7.8 percent in December 2010 on an annualized basis) from the second half of 2008.
It has been gradually reduced from 11 percent to 7 percent since July 2008. The last reduction of the refinancing rate occurred in September 2009. This level is a historic minimum.