Jelasic: Inflation in June will be less than four percent

Belgrade, Jun 14,. 2010. (Serbia Today)  Outgoing National Bank of Serbia (NBS) Governor Radovan Jelašić  announced that the inflation rate is expected to be less than four percent in June. The figure, according to him, will be about five percent at the end of the year. Jelašić added that prices do not depend only on the dinar exchange rate. The central bank chief told journalists that, apart from the exchange rate, prices depend on many other internal and external factors, adding that it is impossible to precisely determine the dinar exchange rate which may jeopardize the price stability, as "monetary economy is neither physics nor chemistry.” He stressed that Serbia's foreign reserves are high enough for an efficient "defense of the dinar" and added that a certain amount of foreign currency was sold on Monday only for dinars, so that there would be no large daily exchange rate fluctuations. Jelašić recommended that the future NBS governor should, in general, pursue the same policy that he pursued in the last "three plus six years", but added that "it will be up to him to decide on which course to follow.” The new bill on the NBS is before parliament. The debate on the bill is to begin this week, so the new governor is most likely to be elected at the end of June or beginning of July.