Baku, Azerbaijan, June 6
By Azad Hasanli – Trend:
The ING Bank N.V. has forecast in its Russia & CIS Macro Outlook that inflation will decrease to 7.2 percent in Azerbaijan in 2018.
The bank’s analysts forecast the inflation to be 13 percent in 2017.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov believes attaining a single-digit rate of inflation by late 2017 is feasible.
“Inflation is not only of monetary nature – it is also affected by world prices and other factors. These factors must be properly managed. Overall, we believe the decrease of the inflation rate to a single-digit figure is quite realistic,” Rustamov told reporters on May 30.
International financial organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) have more positive forecasts with regard to the inflation rate in Azerbaijan. According to IMF forecasts, the average annual inflation rate will be 10 percent in Azerbaijan in 2017, 8 percent in 2018 and 6 percent in 2022.
According to the latest WB report, Trade in Transition, the inflation rate will be 7.8 percent in the country in 2017, 4.2 percent in 2018 and 3.8 percent in 2019.
Prices for consumer goods and tariffs for services rose by 13.5 percent in Azerbaijan in January-April 2017 as compared to the same period of 2016, according to the country’s State Statistics Committee.