Updated on 12:36 p.m. Moscow Time
MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Central Bank will change its national GDP growth forecast slightly from the current 0.4 percent for 2014, the bank's First Deputy Governor Ksenia Yudaeva said Friday.
"Our forecast is rather sensible, and if it is to be corrected, [the adjustment] will not be significant," Yudaeva said during the International Banking Forum in Sochi.
The bank's deputy governor said the risk of slower economic growth is structural, whereas "the risks do exist from the point of view of the inflation, and we have been reacting to them actively at the previous session."
Russia's Ministry of Economic Development decided at the end of August to leave its GDP growth forecast of 0.5 percent for this year unchanged. Its inflation forecast stood at 7-7.5 percent.
Yudaeva said the Central Bank's inflation forecast will follow along the same range, and urged the government to consider the effect of the sales tax on the inflation, in order to "avoid sharp inflation leaps and not to affect mid-term economic expectations."
Russian authorities are considering introducing a 5-pecent sales tax starting next year.
Yudaeva also said the ruble is currently at a comfortable level and the bank plans no currency interventions.
"We see no serious threat to the financial stability, that is why we are not holding any interventions in the market at the moment," she said.
The Russian currency weakened at the end of August to a record low of 37.51 rubles against the dollar due to the escalating situation in Ukraine, but recovered two-thirds of the loss in the first week of September in light of renewed hopes for the resolution of the crisis.
