Saturday, December 13 2014 15:47
AMD devaluation is still going on amid daily interventions of Central Bank of Armenia
ArmInfo. Almost no currency operations were registered at Nasdaq OMX Armenia on December 8-12. The operations in the interbank currency market considerably dropped and the AMD devaluation is still going on.
As a result, in the retail currency market of Armenia the average exchange rate rose from 451 to 466.5 AMD/$1 this week. Over 15% devaluation has been fixed since October.
The press service of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has told ArmInfo that on December 8-12 currency operations at NASDAQ OMX Armenia totaled $100 thsd at the average exchange rate of 461 AMD/$1. This was the only transaction this week (Dec 10). In the interbank currency market, the currency purchase and sale operations amounted to $23.7 mln at the average exchange rate of 459.88 AMD/$1 (61-fold decline).
The source says that in the intrabank currency market (transactions with customers) the banks bought $100 mln on Dec 8-12 (up 45% versus the previous week) at the average exchange rate of 454.88 AMD/$1, and sold $124.5 mln (down 14.5%) at the average exchange rate of 459.23 AMD/$1. In the meantime, the banks bought 7.7 mln EUR (almost no changes versus the previous week) at the average exchange rate of 562.83 AMD/1EUR, and sold 14.5 mln EUR (up 10%) at the exchange rate of 570.66 AMD/1EUR. The banks also bought 631.4 mln RUR (11% decline) at the average exchange rate of 8.36 AMD/1RUR and sold 173.6 mln RUR (24% decline) at the exchange rate of 8.68 AMD/1RUR.
On 1-5 December, Armenian banks provided AMD loans worth 58.4 bln AMD and USD loans worth $41.3 mln. As compared with the previous week, AMD loans rose by 20.4%, and USD loans dropped by 45.2%.
According to the CBA's statement dated 8 December 2014, on 8 December, the Central Bank of Armenia launched daily interventions to restore the balance in the exchange market and the soften currency fluctuations. The interventions will last till the end of 2014. The CBA will continue announcing the ceiling of daily sale amounts till the end of the year to normalize the situation in the exchange market of Armenia. According to the source, the CB will be publishing foreign exchange operations to ensure transparency in the financial market of Armenia. The daily intervention amounts will be reduced gradually until the national currency exchange rate is balanced. In particular, during the first week (8- 12 December) the daily interventions will be $6 mln. Afterwards, the daily interventions will gradually be reduced depending on demand and will be brought to zero by the end of the year.
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