policy, we need inflation expectations to be, in our language, “anchored” to this target. The current situation is that financial market professionals, such as stock telegram number database analysts (whose forecasts we regularly look at on various resources, and recently we have been polling them ourselves and posting the results of the poll on our website for everyone), really do have their expectations “anchored.” Yes, they are forecasting inflation above 4% this year, and their expectations for all subsequent years are based on our target. That is, they really understand what we are doing, they understand how we are reacting to changes in the economic environment, they know that this is exactly what we will do. They understand that we will not sacrifice inflation to any other considerations, they have no reason to doubt this.
In fact, if you look at the history from
2016 to 2020 inclusive, over these five years, the average annual inflation was exactly 4%. And this is a consequence of the fact that the Bank of Russia, having switched to an inflation targeting policy, has not deviated from this path all these years. Yes, now, due to the pandemic, inflation has deviated from the target, it is more than 6%. But it is important to understand that the Bank of Russia continues to work, and inflation will return to 4%.
August-September, we may see disinflationary
processes associated with the harvest. By the end of the year, we expect inflation to be below current levels. We forecast a return to the target of 4% in the second we rely on monthly data half of 2022. And in the future, we see inflation close to this figure.
— In your opinion, can the population itself ao lists somehow influence inflation?