Russian Central Bank `Beginning to Worry' About Inflation, Ignatiev Says

Russia’s central bank isn’t excluding the possibility of raising interest rates in the first quarter of next year, Chairman Sergey Ignatiev said.

“Inflation is beginning to worry us,” he told reporters today in Moscow. Annual price-growth is set to reach 8.4 percent this year, he estimated.

A weaker ruble in recent months has affected inflation, Ignatiev said.

Annual inflation accelerated to 8.1 percent in November, the highest this year, after the worst drought in at least half a century hobbled agriculture and pushed up food prices. The central bank retracted its pledge to keep its main interest rates at a record low “for the coming months” in a statement on Nov. 26, when it kept the refinancing rate at 7.75 percent for a sixth consecutive month.

To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Abelsky in Moscow at pabelsky@bloomberg.net; Maria Levitov in Moscow at mlevitov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Willy Morris at wmorris@bloomberg.net