{"id":113106,"date":"2017-09-18T16:34:53","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T20:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=113106"},"modified":"2017-09-18T20:23:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T00:23:00","slug":"azerbaijan-holds-rate-expects-no-change-to-stance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2017\/09\/azerbaijan-holds-rate-expects-no-change-to-stance\/","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan holds rate, expects no change to stance"},"content":{"rendered":"
September 18, 2017<\/div>
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By CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a>
\nAzerbaijan’s central bank kept its benchmark refinancing rate at 15.0 percent and said an analysis of short and medium-term risks to inflation implied there was no need for any significant correction to its monetary policy.
\nThe Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan (CBA), which has maintained its rate since raising it in September 2016, also said the current account showed a surplus of 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product in the first half of this year due to higher oil prices and this was helping maintain a balance in the foreign exchange market.
\n \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0The\u00a0<\/span>economy\u00a0of\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Azerbaijan, which relies on oil and gas for 95 percent of its exports and 75 percent of government revenue, was hit hard by the fall of crude oil prices in 2014 and its currency, the manat, came under heavy pressure as residents switched into U.S. dollars.<\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Initially the CBA abandoned the manat’s peg to the\u00a0<\/span>dollar in favor of a dollar-euro basket and then in early 2015 it devalued the manat by one-third.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>In December 2015 the CBA then shifted to a\u00a0<\/span>flexible\u00a0exchange rate regime and since then the manat has been more stable.<\/span><\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Today the manat was trading around 1.69 to the U.S. dollar, \u00a0up 6.5 percent this year, and the central bank said the decline of the\u00a0<\/span>dollar\u00a0this year was helping reduce inflation expectations and the stable exchange rate is helping further reduce the economy’s dollarization, with\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0current level of interest rates also helping stimulate savings.<\/span><\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Azerbaijan’s\u00a0<\/span>inflation\u00a0rate was steady at 14.0\u00a0<\/span>percent\u00a0in August from July\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0there were no significant\u00a0<\/span>changes\u00a0to\u00a0<\/span>inflation\u00a0<\/span>expectations, with\u00a0various products and prices still sensitive to\u00a0changes in government-regulated prices, the CBA said.<\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>Helped by a trade\u00a0<\/span>surplus of US$1.9\u00a0billion in the January-August\u00a0period,\u00a0<\/span>Azerbaijan’s strategic currency\u00a0<\/span>reserves<\/span>\u00a0rose by 11.5\u00a0<\/span>percent, the CBA said, adding<\/span>\u00a0its expects the\u00a0<\/span>balance of payments to remain in a surplus by the end of the year.<\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In the country’s non-oil sector,\u00a0economic output was up 2.2 percent in the first 8 months of the year,\u00a0with tourism up 2.6\u00a0percent, non-oil industry up 4.6 percent, trade up 1.8\u00a0percent, and communications and\u00a0information up 4.9 percent.<\/span>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The CBA is currently using a flexible exchange rate regime but plans to\u00a0adopt a floating\u00a0exchange rage\u00a0regime along with an inflation targeting regime, with the monetary base a reliable guide to its monetary\u00a0policy stance.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/span>
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\n<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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By CentralBankNews.info Azerbaijan’s central bank kept its benchmark refinancing rate at 15.0 percent and said an analysis of short and medium-term risks to inflation implied there was no need for any significant correction to its monetary policy. The Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan (CBA), which has maintained its rate since raising it in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113106"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113110,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113106\/revisions\/113110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}