YEREVAN, November 11, /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) decided Tuesday to leave unchanged its refinancing rate at 5%, the CBA’s press office said to ARKA. The press office said inflation rate grew by 0.5% in October against September. As a result the annual inflation rate rose to 3.5%.

A statement by the Central Bank said inflation behavior and processes in macroeconomic environment were in tune with its earlier forecasts. Moderate external inflationary pressures continued throughout the period caused by the growing trend of world prices for mining and some food products.

On September 8, 2009 the Central Bank of Armenia lowered the refinancing rate by 0.25 percentage points to 5%. It was the seventh consecutive lowering of the refinancing rate since March 3 when the Central Bank reversed to the floating exchange rate of the national currency Dram against hard currencies raising also the refinancing rate by one percentage point to 7.75%. -0-