(Bloomberg) -- Russia is poised for another aggressive rate hike on Friday as the central bank continues to find little success in tackling inflation that has recently accelerated well above its forecast.
The Bank of Russia is set to raise borrowing costs for the fourth time in a row — and by 200 basis points just like in October, according to six out of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Two foresee the benchmark climbing by 300 basis points to 24%, while Goldman Sachs International and HSBC Bank Plc suggest rate setters will put monetary tightening on hold at their Dec. 20 meeting.
“Keeping the key rate at the current level is unlikely to be seriously discussed given the latest inflation data,” said Olga Belenkaya, an economist at Finam in Moscow. Even a percentage-point hike is unlikely to be enough for the bank, she said.
Russia’s annual inflation accelerated again in November to 8.9% from 8.5% in the previous month, even after the central bank increased the key rate in October to a record-high 21%. Price growth outpaced the latest official forecast for the end of the year, which already had been revised upward to 8%-8.5%.
Inflation expectations, a closely watched metric for monetary policymakers, reached 13.9% in December, the highest level in a year. That indicates waning trust in the Bank of Russia to achieve its price-growth target of 4%.
“Given the situation on the foreign exchange market and the pace of inflation, even a rate hike up to 25% as early as this Friday would be quite reasonable,” Nikita Eurov, FX and interest rate strategist at Alfa Bank, wrote in a note.
The central bank began the year signaling it would consider monetary easing in the second half. Instead, it has raised the benchmark by 500 basis points since July as its bet on a slowdown in price growth failed to materialize.
The war on Ukraine and massive budget spending have kept the economy overheated, while acute labor shortages and stiff competition for workers have driven up wages. Production, meanwhile, hasn’t been able to expand quick enough to keep pace with rapidly increasing demand.
The central bank’s plan to cool demand by making credit prohibitively expensive has so far acted as a brake on economic growth, but not on rising prices.
Annual price growth as of Dec. 16 reached 9.52% while food inflation accelerated to 10.93%, weekly data published by the Economy Ministry showed. Vegetables were 24% more expensive than in the previous year.
Another unwelcome surprise for the central bank has been the slide in the ruble’s exchange rate to above 100 per dollar, said Oleg Kuzmin, an economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. “We believe that the ‘standard’ step for the Bank of Russia in case of ‘surprises’ is to hike the rate by 2 percentage points,” he said.
The ruble plunged against the dollar after the US sanctioned some 50 Russian banks that still had connections to the global financial system. That added to overall price growth in November and is likely to continue exacerbating inflation.
What Bloomberg Economics Says....
We expect the bank to choose between a 2 and 3 percentage-point increase to 23-24% and to issue hawkish guidance at its last meeting of 2024.
By our estimates, an excessively loose monetary policy stance in 2024, driven in part by subsidized-loan programs and fiscal policy, was responsible for about 3.5% of excess price growth. Supply side issues, such as sanctions restrictions on external trade, have added another 1.5 percentage points of excess inflation.
Alex Isakov, Russia Economist
The central bank has signaled it’s ready to raise the cost of borrowing to whatever level is needed to bring inflation back to the target next year. However, businesses and banks are very concerned that extremely high lending rates could lead to bankruptcies and a freeze in the economy, with some warning that the cure may do more harm than the disease.
At his televised annual news conference and call-in show on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he hoped the bank’s decision would be “balanced” and take into account current “demands.”
The central bank is in a difficult situation, said Belenkaya. On the one hand, inflation running ahead of the forecast may require a rate hike above 23%, but on the other, the higher the rate, the higher the risk of “overdoing tightening,” she said.
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