{"id":98174,"date":"2016-11-15T11:01:21","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T16:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=98174"},"modified":"2016-11-15T11:41:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T16:41:42","slug":"armenia-cuts-rate-25-bps-to-ease-more-on-deflation-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/11\/armenia-cuts-rate-25-bps-to-ease-more-on-deflation-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenia cuts rate 25 bps, to ease more on deflation risks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-1836971007\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">November 15, 2016<\/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; Armenia&#8217;s central bank cut its benchmark refinancing rate by a further 25 basis points to 6.50 percent and said it expects to ease further as there are still risks of deflation in the medium term.<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has now cut its rate by 225 basis points this year and by 400 points since embarking on an easing cycle in August 2015.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;<\/span><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp;Armenia&#8217;s inflation rate rose <\/span>to minus 0.9 percent in October from&nbsp;<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">minus 1.9 percent in August and September but is expected decline in the first quarter of next year in response to lower gas and electricity prices.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; The CBA, which targets inflation in the medium term of 4.0 percent, plus\/minus 1.5 points, added that it is not expecting any&nbsp;<\/span>inflationary<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;pressures from the&nbsp;foreign sector in coming months although there have been some inflation in&nbsp;international markets recently.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; Economic activity in Armenia &#8211;&nbsp;<\/span><\/span>located east of Turkey, north of Iran &nbsp;and west of Azerbaijan &#8211;&nbsp;<span style=\"background-color: white; font-family: inherit;\">is&nbsp;continuing&nbsp;to slow&nbsp;down, the central bank&nbsp;said, due to slowing growth in industry and agriculture.&nbsp;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp; &nbsp; But it expects demand to recover due to monetary and fiscal policies implemented last year and this year. Armenia&#8217;s Gross&nbsp;<\/span>Domestic<span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;Product grew by an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year, down from 4.5 percent in&nbsp;the first quarter.<\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"background-color: white;\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit;\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/span>&nbsp; &nbsp;The exchange rate of Armenia&#8217;s dram plunged in late November 2014 in response to the economic crises in Russia, Armenia&#8217;s largest trading partner, and the fall in the ruble.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; In response, the CBA quickly raised its rate by 375 basis points to 10.50 percent from December 2014 to February 2015, helping stabilize the dram&#8217;s exchange rate.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; This year the dram has been slowly appreciating and was trading at 478.4 to the U.S. dollar today, up 1.1 percent since the start of this year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\">www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; Armenia&#8217;s central bank cut its benchmark refinancing rate by a further 25 basis points to 6.50 percent and said it expects to ease further as there are still risks of deflation in the medium term.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has now cut its rate by 225 basis points this year [&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-98174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98174","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=98174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98175,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98174\/revisions\/98175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}