_____________________________
On Tuesday, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) reported that consumer price inflation in Russia hit a historic post-Soviet period low of 6.1 percent in 2011, citing final data. It stated, “The consumer price index was 100.4 percent in December (2011) and 106.1 percent for the full year, the lowest figure since 1991”. The Russian government has struggled for years to achieve low-digit inflation, in order to create a favourable investment climate and lure foreign investment. In 2010, annual inflation in Russia hit 8.8 percent due to the summer drought, exceeding forecasts and equalling the figure for 2009, the year of the global financial meltdown. In his state of the nation address in December, President Dmitri Medvedev said that a low rate of inflation was Russia’s major economic achievement in 2011. He said, “For the first time in modern Russian history, we’ve achieved an unprecedented low level of inflation of slightly over six percent”.
10 January 2012
RIA-Novosti
