Russia’s central bank cut its key interest rate to the pre-crisis level of 9.5 percent on Friday and kept the door open to further easing as inflation slowed while noting uncertainty related to external risks such as the Western embargo on Russian oil.
Russia has been cutting rates since an emergency hike to 20 percent in the immediate aftermath of Moscow’s despatch of armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24 and the unprecedented Western sanctions that followed.
Friday’s rate cut of 150 basis points exceeded the average expectation of a 100 bp move in a Reuters poll earlier this week, after three rounds of 300 bp cuts, the most recent of which was just two weeks ago….