MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's inflation peak has passed, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Wednesday, although the slowdown is not yet sufficient for interest rates to start to fall.
Russia's central bank is expected to hold its key rate at 16% at its next rate-setting meeting on April 26, as it did in February and March after five rate hikes in a row, a Reuters poll showed last month.
Nabiullina told lawmakers in the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, that the central bank's tight monetary policy in response to strong consumer demand and rouble weakening last year was having an effect.
"If we had not raised the key rate, then inflation would have been much higher than the 7.4% we had for last year," Nabiullina said. "Moreover, it would have continued accelerating even now."
"We will start lowering the key rate, when we are convinced that the slowdown in inflation has reached the required speed," Nabiullina said, without specifying what this speed was.
The bank in March said it was too early to judge the future speed of disinflationary trends.
Analysts polled by Reuters expect rates to end this year at 12.5%. The central bank's inflation target is 4%.
Nabiullina noted that fiscal policy was making a big contribution to domestic demand. Russia is spending heavily this year, particularly on the defence sector, to finance the conflict in Ukraine.