The reference rate in January stagnated at 7.50 percent per year, same as in December last year.

The reference rate is calculated taking into account the volume of transactions and the interest rates on BNR's deposit-taking and reverse-repo operations in the month prior to the announcement.

In a move to cut inflation, BNR this month increased to 9 percent the monetary policy interest, this being the third such move since October last year, when this grew to 7.5 percent and January this year, when a 0.5 percentage points increase took place.