Friday, April 22 2011 17:28
Expert: Dedollarization process speed does not comply with rational expectations
ArmInfo. The process of economy dedollarization is going on, but the speed of this process does not comply with reasonable expectations, Development Director of Ameriabank CJSC Tigran Jrbashyan said at today's press conference when commenting on the reduction of USD deposits in the total structure of deposits of the Armenian banking system.
"The correlation of AMD and USD deposits is changing, but very slowly", the expert said and stressed that it is impossible to estimate and forecast the changes in the structure of deposits on the basis of rational expectations only. "In this sphere human psychology works, which is mostly irrational. Therefore, the reductions rates of USD deposits cannot be calculated on the basis of rational analytical tricks only", Jrbashyan said.
He added that alongside with fighting dollarization, one should also ensure stable devaluation of AMD, as the task is to help the exporters. "But how to fight dollarization when there is a problem with devaluation?", said the expert. According to him, in rational people's understanding, it is possible to fight the problem by means of the interest rates. "However, the very few would like to take loans at interest high rates", he said.
To recall, according to the National Statistical Service of Armenia, over Feb 2011 the deposits attracted by the Armenian commercial banks grew by 3%, and by 8.2% as compared with Feb 2010, and totaled 718.9 bln AMD ($1.956 bln) by 1 March 2011. In the structure of the deposits, the share of AMD deposits made up 30.3% or 217.7 bln AMD ($592.5 mln), and the share of foreign exchange deposits - 69.7% or $1.36 bln (501.2 bln AMD).
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