Minister of Economic Development of Russia Alexei Ulyukayev: "The highest inflation is expected for the first quarter of the next year"

Minister of Economic Development of Russia Alexei Ulyukayev in an interview to "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" promised that inflation in Russia will decline in the next year. The minister believes that you should not expect a significant reduction in the growth of consumer prices. Inflation could be "significantly higher" than 8 per cent by the end of 2014.

"Inflation for 9 and a half months of 2014 exceeds all the accumulated inflation for the last year. Our forecast of 7.5 percent was prepared when the dollar exchange rate was less than 40 rubles. We do not change it. It makes no sense to change the forecast every time. The influence of the exchange rate on inflation has always been, but now it has become more significant. The risk that inflation will be more than 8 percent, and possibly much more is real. Non-food items prices rose more than six percent now, and food items prices – by more than thirteen percent. But we don’t have reasons to believe that before the end of this year the situation will change. On the global food market the situation is quite comfortable: there is no any observable price growth, and even, on the contrary, - we see price stability.  The fact that food inflation in Russia accelerated is driven by our domestic effect,"- said the Minister.

Alexei Ulyukayev also explained what Russians should do with their pension savings, do we need to impose taboo on new taxes, how the government should support the ruble, what will be the oil price and what price threshold should be for tax-free internet parcels from abroad.

Read the interview with Alexei Ulyukayev