Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 21
By Anvar Mammadov – Trend:
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) plans to conduct close coordination with the country’s government to reduce inflation to six percent in 2018, Elman Rustamov, head of the CBA, said.
He was speaking Nov. 21 at a plenary session of the Azerbaijani Parliament during discussion of the country’s draft state budget for 2018.
He said that this year, the CBA pursues conservative anti-inflationary policy, and the discount rate remained unchanged within this policy in order to stimulate savings in the Azerbaijani national currency.
Rustamov noted that following the results of ten months of 2017, average annual inflation in Azerbaijan remained high - at the level of 13.7 percent.
“Such inflation was caused not by monetary reasons, but mainly the influence of external factors,” he added. “Over the past month, rise in prices for separate goods, including crops and livestock products was observed in the global market, and this prevented inflation’s decrease in Azerbaijan.”
The Azerbaijani government forecasts average annual inflation at 13.2 percent in 2017.
The average annual inflation in Azerbaijan was 12.4 percent in 2016.