At the next meeting of the Board of Directors on April 23, the Central Bank plans to consider three possible options for changing the key bet. This was told by the head of the Department of Monetary Policy Regulator Kirill Tremasov in an interview with Reuters.
In a conversation with Tremov, three options called possible solutions, which the Central Bank considered at the March meeting: to maintain a bet, increase by 25 basic points or 50 basis points. “Taking into account the information that we have at the current moment, most likely, such a set of solutions will be present at the April meeting,” he said.
Tremasov recalled the statement of the regulator about the intention to return to a neutral monetary policy. Now the central bank estimates the range of the neutral rate of five to six percent, “but the trajectory of movement to it is not completely predetermined” and will depend on the information that the regulator will receive.
At the same time, the question of revising the level of the neutral range is not yet considered, since it is necessary to “accumulate another story, to evaluate the past crisis episode, to estimate the trajectory of how we are restored,” explained the tremors.
On March 19, the Central Bank of Russia for the first time since 2018 increased the key rate by 0.25 percentage points – up to 4.5 percent per annum. At the following meetings of the leadership of the regulator, the closest of which will be held on April 23, it is possible to further raise the rate. The Central Bank expects the annual inflation rate to return to the target level of four percent in the first half of 2022.