From Reuters via Investing.com, October 25:
Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and her deputy Alexei Zabotkin addressed a news conference on Friday after the central bank hiked its key rate to 21%, the highest level since February 2003.
Nabiullina spoke in Russian. The quotes below were translated into English by Reuters.
NABIULLINA ON THE RATE DECISION
"We considered three options today: to raise the rate to 20%, to 21% and above 21%. The option of holding the rate was not considered, no one suggested it, but we discussed the options of raising the rate to 20% and 21%.
"The possibility of raising the rate with the same steps in the next (meeting) will depend on the data that we'll receive...but we allow for the possibility of an additional rate increase in December."
NABIULLINA ON THE TIMING OF A RATE CUT
"When inflation starts to fall steadily, and we see it falling in line with our forecast, this may indeed be a signal for the start of a rate cut. When that will happen, we can't say right now."
NABIULLINA ON THE MAIN PRO-INFLATIONARY FACTORS....
....MUCH MORE
Earlier:
"Russia Raises Key Rate to Record 21% as Inflation Persists"
Madame Nabiullina is extremely competent and if this was a purely technocratic exercise she could knock off work at 10 am and go shop for brooches. But it's not purely technocratic.
She, as much as anyone in the upper reaches of power in Moscow knows the human impact of the bank's policies and that human impact is going to start depressing the populous, boom economy or not.
