The Central Bank's board held the main rate at 14% on 16 September, Gazeta.uz reported at 12:45 from the regulator's press service. August inflation slowed to 6.2% year on year; core inflation was about 5.5%. "Despite the continuing decline in inflation and the appearance of some signs of more balanced economic dynamics, the persistence of certain pro-inflationary risks requires maintaining the current tight monetary conditions," the statement said.
Desk arithmetic on the banks' own numbers puts Uzbekistan's real rate at 7.8 percentage points, the difference between 14 and 6.2. Astana's gap is narrower. Kazakhstan's National Bank set 16.25% on 4 September against August inflation of 9.8%, 6.45 points; Armenia's Central Bank raised its rate to 6.75% on Tuesday against 4.4% in August, 2.35 points. These are simple differences, not the banks' own real-rate measures.
The risks the board listed sit outside its instrument. World prices for raw materials, food and energy keep pressure on domestic inflation, and the share of goods and services whose prices rise faster than 5% a year is growing, which the bank reads as price pressure "of a sustained character". The continuing liberalisation of regulated prices "may strengthen secondary inflationary effects". Expectations fall too. They fall more slowly than inflation itself, which the bank calls inflationary inertia.
The date matters more than the number.
Two forces pull back. The real effective exchange rate of the som is strengthening, which eases the pressure through import prices. Credit growth is normalising under the current conditions, and positive real rates, the statement says, support the propensity to save. Demand stays active, though. Retail trade, services and investment all show it, the bank adds.
The date matters more than the number. The bank's promise is conditions "for reducing inflation to the target level of 5% by the end of 2027". That is also the year the finance ministry's draft on the pension age starts its changes: UzDaily reported the draft on Tuesday from the SOVAZ portal, open for comment to 30 September, with three months a year added to the retirement age from 2028. The next rate meeting is 28 October.
The board's three named risks belong to other desks: world prices to the markets, the freeing of regulated prices to the government's calendar, expectations to the public's memory. A real rate of 7.8 points is the premium the bank pays for controlling none of them, and it is the widest of the three capitals that decided this month. The year that closes the gap is 2027, when the 5% target falls due and the pension draft's changes begin. Reserves of $72.13 billion at 1 September, 90% of them gold, are the other cushion. The watch: 28 October; the September inflation print; whether the pension draft leaves the portal with its dates intact.