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MOSCOW, May 23 (RIA Novosti)-Inflation in May will be between 0.4-0.5%, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.
"We are expecting 5.4%-5.5% [inflation] by the summer," said Alexei Savatyugin, the head of the Finance Ministry's financial policy department.
He said that the projected 9% annual inflation in 2006 was a realistic figure if nothing extraordinary happened.
Alexander Zhukov, a deputy prime minister, said Monday that inflation in Russia would be kept to a maximum of 9% in 2006 as compared with the rate of 10.8% in 2005, and the government had set itself the goal of keeping inflation to less than 5% a year in the next three years.