TIRANA, July 6(Xinhua) -- The Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania has decided to keep the base interest rate unchanged at 1.25 percent, Governor of the Bank of Albania Gent Sejko said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Sejko said that the new available data show that the Albanian economy and its monetary indicators have developed in line with Central Bank's expectations, adding that in line with these forecasts, economic activity and inflation have increased.
"The expansion of private investments benefited from the ample liquidity and the low interest rates in the financial markets," Albanian Daily News quoted the governor as saying.
Sejko said that the performance of deposits and liabilities of banking system balance sheet is stable. Nonetheless, lending remains sluggish. Cleaned up from the effect of non-performing loans write off, lending to private sector recorded 2.5 percent annual growth in April.
"Bank of Albania expects a progressive improvement of economic activity in the medium term. These improvements will aid the gradual increase of inflation and its return to target at the end of 2018," he added.
