In June, the CPI inflation in Kazakhstan has accelerated to 7% y/y from 6.9% registered in May and 6.5% y/y seen in April, the Statistics Agency has reported. Acceleration of inflation is driven by sharp depreciation of Kazakh national currency KZT on Feb 11. National Bank of Kazakhstan decided to stop supporting KZT which led to de facto devaluation of around 20%.
Prices for food products were the main driver of inflation as they increased by 7.3% y/y. Prices for non-food products went up by 7% y/y and for services advanced by 6.6% y/y.
Since the beginning of the current year, the rate of inflation has reached 4.8%. In m/m terms, the CPI inflation has slowed down to 0.3% after seeing a growth of 0.6% m/m in May . Prices for food in June rose by 0.4% (slowdown against May when they grew by 0.8% m/m), for non-food products by 0.3% m/m, paid services by 0.2% m/m.
We assume that growth in prices would have been higher but the authorities took measures to ease burden of price hike for the society by introducing moratorium on tariffs changes. The government’s target for the inflation corridor remains unchanged at 6-8% y/y this year. In 2013, inflation stood at 4.8% y/y.
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