Belarus central bank to cut refinancing rate by 2 %

Belarus will cut its refinancing rate by 2 percentage points to 20 percent starting from July 1, the central bank said on Friday.

The National Bank will also reduce rates on constantly available and bilateral transactions of support of current liquidity of banks -- from 27 percent to 25 percent, rates on permanently available liquidity withdrawal operations of banks -- from 15 percent to 13 percent, it said in a statement.

The central bank said primarily slowing inflation contributed to these decisions.

According to the National Statistics Committee of Belarus, the increase in consumer prices fell to 0.5 percent in May 2016 compared with April 2016 and to 12.4 percent compared with May 2015.

The refinancing rate was lowered by 2 percent to 22 percent on May 1, 2016.

The refinancing rate, which was hiked by 5 percentage points to 25 percent on Jan. 9, 2015, was reduced by 1 percentage point to 24 percent on April 1

source : xinhua