Yerevan/Mediamax/. Board of the Central Bank (CB) of Armenia made a decision at today’s session to increase the refinancing rate by 0.5 percentage points, establishing it at the level of 7.75%.

Mediamax was informed in the press service of the CB that in January, Armenia registered 2.8% inflation, in the view of which the 12 months’ inflation made 10.6%, 8.8 percentage points of which are secured due to growth of prices for foodstuffs.

CB Board believes that inflation environment is expanding, and this is related to preservation of tension in international raw material and foodstuffs markets and also to the still high prices for agricultural production.

The Board believes that, despite the fact that reestablishment of internal demand does not yet form inflationary pressures, nevertheless, the forecasted tendencies of economy growth, efforts of secondary effects of last year’s high inflation and the growth of inflation expectations provoke new inflationary risks.

In this contest, CB considers necessary the gradual toughening of monetary-credit policy, which, “along with anti-inflationary actions of the government will create perquisites for returning the inflation to the target corridor starting from the second half of 2011”.