Central and eastern Europe’s recent rapid economic growth could be thwarted in “a number of countries” by rising inflation, the new president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development warned on Thursday.

“We must realise that inflation has the potential to destroy part of the progress that has been made in many of these societies – inflation which is double-digit or which is even above 20 per cent,” Thomas Mirow told the Financial Times in his first interview since taking up the job at the beginning of the month.