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RUSSIA'S ECONOMY

Central Bank reports Russia’s foreign debt up 3%

Russia's Central Bank has no plans to raise its key rate at the next board meeting

© Sergei Fadeichev/TASS

MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. Russia’s foreign debt has increased 3% as of July 1 since the beginning of this year to $529.62 bln, according to the documents released by the Central Bank on Thursday.

The main share of the country’s foreign debt accounted for non-state non-bank sectors of the economy. Thus, their accumulated foreign debt was $351.58 bln as of July 1, a 2.43% increase compared with early 2017.

Particularly, the foreign debt of state run public authorities since risen 20.5% since January 1 to $47.22 bln, the debt of the banking sector dropped 4.8% to $113.68 bln, the Central Bank’s debt surged 38.9% to $17.14.

Key rate

Central Bank will not consider the option to raise its key rate at the next board meeting, she went on.

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"We don’t see any distortions regarding the market understanding of our perspectives. I can say that we do not consider the (key) rate hike," she said.

The regulator’s board of directors decided to cut the key rate by 0.25 percentage points to 9.00% per annum at the latest board meeting on June 16. It was the third consecutive time that the Bank of Russia reduced the key rate this year, first since September 2016, after the rate was slashed by 25 basis points to 9.75% in March and by 50 basis points to 9.25% in April. In June, the regulator said it sees room for cutting the key rate in the second half of 2017. The next board meeting on the key rate is planned for July 28, 2017.

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