M2 is broad money. The monitor tracks its year-on-year growth rate because an acceleration can reveal a change in how a widening deficit is being financed.
Why money creation is worth watching on its own
When oil and gas revenue falls, the budget deficit can widen. If OFZ auctions do not cover the financing need, one remaining route is for state-owned banks to expand credit rather than channel genuine private saving. Coerced bank purchases can make bond auctions look healthy while monetizing the deficit, but the resulting growth in the money stock remains visible in the central bank's own series. That is why the monitor calls M2 the printing-press detector.
How the number is built
The reading is the year-on-year growth rate of broad money, taken directly from the central bank's own series. If a source stops publishing, the monitor logs the gap as an availability event rather than silently carrying a value forward or interpolating one.
Where the anchors come from
100 marks a growth rate of 10% a year — the measured 2015–2021 average, before the war. 0 marks 30% a year, the registered line for a shift toward monetized deficits. Both were registered before any reading; the full reasoning is on the methodology page.
What faster money growth does not mean
An accelerating M2 reading is not proof that a specific transaction was money-printing; it is a statistical signal, not a forensic trace of one payment. Read alongside the other indicators, it can show a shift in how the deficit is being financed without assigning every change in broad money to that cause. That distinction is why the monitor treats M2 as a detector, not a verdict.