Russian cbank may raise baseline, $40 oil price forecast in March

BOR, Moscow Region, Feb 9 (PRIME) -- Russia’s central bank may revise its oil price forecast in the baseline development scenario in March, and will likely increase it from the current of U.S. $40 per barrel for 2017–2019, Chairwoman Elvira Nabiullina said at a meeting with the Association of Regional Banks of Russia on Thursday.

“We are revising the scenario, and work is going on. We will present adjusted scenarios by our major meeting in March, and we will obviously revise the oil price in the baseline scenario. As we see it, the price this year will be higher than we had forecasted. Previously, we saw it at $40 per barrel,” she said.

Still, the regulator is not ready to make a scenario with constantly growing oil prices a baseline plan, she said. The current scenario with rising prices sees them at $46 in 2017, $50 in 2018 and $55 in 2019.

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