By forecasting lower growth and inflation, the Bank signalled that interest rates would be left at 0.5pc until well into 2013.

And Columbia University's Center for International Business Cycle Research said its index that seeks to forecast inflation had risen for the sixth consecutive month.

M2 is a key economic indicator used to forecast inflation.

In the February Inflation Report, it forecast inflation peaking at 4.5pc in the three months to September.

Indeed, even as Congressional Democrats sought to portray inflation as continuing to decline, researchers at Columbia University said their index designed to forecast inflation registered a seventh straight advance.

It leaves people feeling that nobody knows how to forecast inflation anymore.

Mr. Chernomyrdin's prescriptions brought sighs and one groan from senior Western diplomats, who forecast considerably higher inflation and a further run on the ruble, which stabilized today, at least, when the Central Bank flooded the market with dollars from the outset.

At that time, "Draghi and all of his colleagues (the decision was unanimous) chose not to cut the price for private-sector loans [below the 1% achieved with the "repeal"], even when he forecasts inflation to fall below the targeted 2% later this year."

They forecast annual inflation of 4 percent for 1991, assuming that crude oil prices would be between $25 and $30 a barrel.

In the medium-to-long term, economic agents begin to forecast inflation and to use those forecasts as de facto price indexes that can trigger price adjustments before the actual price indices are made known to the public.