Tbilisi (GBC) - The policy of the National Bank is moderately strict and we welcome the slowing down of crediting, - said on Wednesday the resident representative of the IMF in Georgia, Selim Chakir, at the Regional Economic Outlook. According to the 10-month statistics, the growth of lending (excluding the exchange rate effect) is reduced to 5%. However, the NBG claims that the annualized rate shows a moderate increase of 13.8% and the decline is entirely due to the exchange rate effect.

Chakir supports a strict policy due to the fact that there is inflationary pressure, at the same time there is a risk that inflationary expectations will strengthen.

To avoid this and to bring inflation down to the target level, tight monetary policy is a countermeasure and the right policy response. It expects annual inflation to reach 10.5% in 2022, 3.8% at the end of 2023, and close to the target rate in 2024.

The NBG is optimistic about the IMF and expects it to approach the target indicator. Several features give hope: downward commodity indexes, active tourism, remittances, which strengthens the GEL and directly affects imported inflation.

IMF predicts 10% economic growth in 2022. By 2023, after mitigating the effect of migrants, gaining  the consequences of war and global deflation, growth is expected to be within 4%.