Minister: Russia’s inflation to be below 2019 official forecast

MOSCOW, Oct 22 (PRIME) -- Russia’s consumer price inflation will be significantly lower than the official forecast of 3.8% in 2019, Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin said on Tuesday during the Open Innovations forum.

“The only thing we talked about is that we see that inflation will be significantly lower than our forecast of 3.8%. We see that the figure will go noticeably below that on the background of weak demand and continuous slowdown in lending,” he said.

He also said that the ministry will not change its 2019 forecast of a 0.1% increase in real disposable income of Russians in spite of a hike in July–September.

“We have seen no reason to change our forecast for 2019 so far. Quarterly figures are always volatile, so far we plan to adhere to the figures that we’ve calculated,” Oreshkin said.

The Federal State Statistics Service said earlier that real disposable income of Russians excluding mandatory payments adjusted for inflation jumped 3% on the year in July–September and rose 0.2% in January–September.

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