Consumer price inflation accelerated again in May, rising from 5.5% in April. Earlier this week Russia s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina told CNBC that inflation is accelerating and that, unlike elsewhere, inflation was not seen as a temporary issue as economies reopened and consumer demand increased. In our case, it s different, Nabiullina told CNBC s Hadley Gamble earlier this week ahead of SPIEF. We think that the inflation pressure in Russia is not transitory, not temporary. We see more persistent factors, monetary factors, that s why we started to get a rate hike back to the neutral stance.
Investors will be looking to the next central bank meeting on June 11 to see what it does next, with speculation mounting that the bank could hike interest rates by as much as 50 basis points from a current level of 5%. The central bank s inflation target is 4%.
Russia's Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, asked about the recent frenzy of Reddit-fuelled retail trading, said the bank was looking into it and highlighted that restrictions for non-qualified or non-professional retail investors were important.