{"id":118721,"date":"2017-12-26T11:29:22","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T16:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=118721"},"modified":"2018-06-01T15:46:51","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T15:46:51","slug":"kyrgyzstan-maintains-rate-and-expects-to-remain-steady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2017\/12\/kyrgyzstan-maintains-rate-and-expects-to-remain-steady\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyrgyzstan maintains rate and expects to remain steady"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-2333291291\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">December 26, 2017<\/div><hr style=\"border: none; border-bottom: 3px solid black;\">\r\n<\/div><\/div><p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"><u>CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a><br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The central bank of the Kyrgyzstan left its benchmark discount rate at 5.0 percent to help stimulate the economy and said a continuation of the current direction of monetary policy is possible in the absence of external and international inflationary shocks.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic (NBKR) has maintained its rate since December 2016 when it last lowered it as part of a 500-basis point easing cycle that began in March last year.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The central bank said inflation in Kyrgyzstan, which borders China to the east and Kazakhstan to the north, &#8220;remained at a moderate level&#8221; of 3.7 percent as of Dec. 15, down from 4.0 percent in November.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Against a backdrop of a recovery in world commodity prices and growing domestic demand, NBKR expects inflation to increase to within its target of 5-7 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The country&#8217;s economy is continuing to recover, with real Gross Domestic Product growth in the January-November period of 4.0 percent, with industry output up 12.8 percent and a steady inflow of remittances supporting overall growth.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Excluding output from the Kumtor gold mine, national output grew 3.9 percent, the central bank said.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;In the third quarter of this year GDP was up 5.0 percent year-on-year, down from 6.0 percent in the second quarter.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The exchange rate of the Kyrgyzstani som remains stable, the central bank said, adding it had carried out interventions in the first half of December to smooth out sharp fluctuations.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The&nbsp;<span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">som has been relatively stable since mid-2016, after falling sharply in 2014 and 2015 due to Russia&#8217;s economic crises.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Today the som was trading at 69.5 to the U.S. dollar, little changed from 69.2 at the start of the year.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/span>Mid-December<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;the International Monetary Fund completed its fifth review of Kyrgyzstan&#8217;s economy, saying it is showing signs of recovery with growth-friendly fiscal&nbsp;<\/span>consolidation<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;essential to rebuild buffers and reduce debt vulnerabilities.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Completion&nbsp;<\/span>of the<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;review allowed disbursement of almost $30&nbsp;<\/span>million<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">,&nbsp;<\/span>bringing<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;total disbursements under the 2015 arrangement to about $80 million out of a total approved $92 million.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The IMF also said the central bank&#8217;s policy was &#8220;appropriately focused on maintaining price stability,&#8221; and the NBKR&nbsp;<\/span>should<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;continue to pursue a two-way&nbsp;<\/span>flexible exchange rate policy and&nbsp;<\/span>limit interventions only to smoothing out excessive volatility.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Authorities&#8217; plan to transition to inflation targeting was also welcomed by the IMF, which added that progress was needed to amend the banking law and thus strengthen the NBKR&#8217;s independence and governance.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The IMF projected real GDP growth in Kyrgyzstan this year of 3.2 percent, down from 3.8 percent in 2016, 3.3 percent in 2018 and 4.9 percent in 2019. Non-gold GDP is seen up 3.3 percent this year, down from 3.7 percent last year, 3.8 percent in 2018 and 4.0 percent in 2019.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Inflation was seen averaging 3.1 percent this year, up from 0.4 percent in 2016, then 4.2 percent in 2018 and 5.0 percent in 2019 and following years until 2022.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <br \/><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\" style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\"> www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"m_-7592656877871247376webexclude\" style=\"color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 14.079999923706055px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"m_-7592656877871247376Level1\" style=\"color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;\"><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The central bank of the Kyrgyzstan left its benchmark discount rate at 5.0 percent to help stimulate the economy and said a continuation of the current direction of monetary policy is possible in the absence of external and international inflationary shocks.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The National Bank of the Kyrgyz [&hellip;]<\/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-118721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118721","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=118721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118722,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118721\/revisions\/118722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}