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Armenia most inflated among CIS states

21 January 2015 [13:41] - TODAY.AZ

/By AzerNews/

By Mushvig Mehdiyev

Armenia's economy in 2014 ended up in a significant inflation, mostly characterized by an increase in consumer goods prices during the last two months, according to the National Statistic Service.

Gurgen Martirosyan, Department Head of the NSS, said a 4.6 percent inflation was caused by 6.2 percent increase in prices of consumer goods, adding that the inflation matched the range of 4+/-1.5 percent, which the Central Bank expected.

Vegetables and fruits, sugar, coffee and tea, fish, oil and bread products became more expensive on markets in November and December, said Martirosyan.

“Price hike hit 331 out of 470 consumer goods in December compared to November in 2014,” Martirosyan noted, saying that inflation was recorded throughout the whole December.

Martirosyan focused on the seasonal increase in prices of agricultural producst as a main factor to trigger the inflation, but also didn't exclude the role of the dram's devaluation, as well.

The annual index of inflation has not included the darm-based drastic hike in prices of some goods, which was observed on domestic markets for several days in December, since the NSS was out of conducting the schedule monitoring.

“We could not include it in the general index given its short-term duration for several days,” Martirosyan said.

Armenia was ranked first along with Ukraine among the CIS countries for the rate of inflation in December. The index of inflation was lower in neighboring Azerbaijan and Georgia, being 1.4 percent and 2 percent respectively, according to Trading Economics, an online source which provides accurate information for 232 countries in terms of the economic indicators, exchange rates, stock market indexes, government bond yields and commodity prices.

Armenia's crippled economy marked the end of 2014 with the currency market in turmoil, as the dram lost ground to the influential international currencies. Continuous price hikes over the last year have seriously taken its tolls on the country's economy and social life.

Moody's has very recently downgraded Armenia's bond rating to Ba3 from Ba2 changing its outlook to negative from stable.

Armenia's increased external vulnerability due to falling remittances from Russia, uncertain outlook for foreign direct investment, as well as elevated susceptibility to exchange rate volatility and expected pressure on foreign exchange reserves were the main factors to affect the changes, according to Moody's.

Meanwhile, a number of experts, including Bagrat Asatryan, former Head of the Armenian Central Bank, expect a deeper economic crisis similar to that of 2009 to hit Armenia in 2015 given the lack of the internal and external sources, solutions in the modern Armenia to regulate the unresolved crisis on the markets.

URL: http://www.today.az/news/regions/138387.html

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