The board of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has decided to retain the refinancing rate at 12.5% per annum.

"This is linked to the necessity of balancing risks to achieve inflation targets in 2017-2018," the central bank said on Thursday.

"Inflation processes in general were under control. However, in the past several months, consumer inflation accelerated, as it was expected, and underlying inflation was stable," the NBU said.

The central bank said that the regulator retained inflation forecast for this year at 9.1% (December on December).

The NBU said that the decision on the size of the refinancing rate (No. 418-sh) was made on July 6, 2017.