The Executive Board of the National Bank of Moldova on April 28 reduced the base rate on the main short-term monetary policy operations from 17% to 15% a year. The annual interest rates on overnight loans will be decreased from 20%, to 18% while on overnight deposits – from 14% to 12%, IPN reports, quoting a press release of the central bank.

The Executive Board also decided to maintain the required reserves ratio from financial means attracted in freely convertible currency at the level of 14% of the base, while the reserves ratio from means attracted in Moldovan lei and non-convertible currency – at the level of 35% of the base.

The analysis of the recent macroeconomic indicators shows that the annual rate of inflation continues to decrease even if it remains above the upper limit of the variation interval of ± 1.5 percentage points of the inflation target of 5%. The annual rate of inflation in March 2016 was 9.4%, a decrease of 0.9 percentage points on a month before.

According to the new forecast, the average annual rate of inflation for 2016 and 2017 will be 7% and 4.8% respectively. The central bank reviewed the previous forecast published in February, decreasing the forecast rate by 3.1% percentage points for 2016 and by 1.8 percentage points for 2017.

The National Bank will continue to offer banks liquidity, according to the schedule announced for 2016, through REPO operations with the term of 14 days, at a fixed rate equal to the base rate of the National Bank plus a margin of 0.25 percentage points.

The next meeting of the Executive Board of the National Bank of Moldova centering on the monetary policy will take place on May 26.