BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 17
Trend:
Inflationary pressure in the Azerbaijani economy slowed down in February 2022, Deputy Head of the Market Analysis Department of the Russian Gazprombank Gulnara Khaidarshina, told Trend on Thursday.
According to her, due to non-monetary anti-inflationary measures, the growth of food and non-food prices in Azerbaijan has stabilized at 17.2 and 6 percent per annum.
"The peak of consumer price growth in Azerbaijan was passed in January 2022, when annual inflation reached 12.5 percent. At the same time, the growth of tariffs for services in February slowed down to 9.3 percent a year and lost 1.8 percent compared to January. Despite the slowdown, inflation is almost twice the upper limit of the target corridor of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (two to six percent)," Khaidarshina said.
According to a representative of Gazprombank, Azerbaijan is actively importing food from Russia (primarily dairy products and grain crops). Therefore, inflationary pressures may increase in the short term, as Russia restricts grain exports to ensure its own food security, she noted.
"We expect that the Central Bank of Azerbaijan Republic will consider the issue of a further increase in the rate, maintaining a step of 25 basis points in order to curb inflationary expectations and support the attractiveness of deposits in the national currency, but without putting pressure on the recovery trend in the economy," Khaidarshina added.
Inflationary pressure in the Azerbaijani economy increased in the fourth quarter of 2021, which was observed in most Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.