Central Bank of Armenia says it exerts no unjustified pressure on national currency rate

ArmInfo. Central Bank of Armenia exerts no unjustified pressure on national currency rate, Deputy Chairman of the Armenian Central Bank Nerses Yeristyan said in the parliament, Thursday.

He assured the parliament that there is no pegged exchange rate. In its upcoming analyses, the Central Bank will substantiate that its currency interventions look to correct short-term fluctuations only.  With such interventions, it is impossible to affect long-term tendencies. "Such kind of statements by the opposition is lie," Yeritsyan said.

According to ArmInfo's data, since August, the Central Bank has launched interventions trice to prevent further devaluation of the national currency. The largest intervention came on August 28 - $95 million, which reduced the exchange rate to 484AMD/1USD after it soared from 474 to 485.5AMD/1USD in July.  In September, the national currency depreciated reaching 485.5AMD/1USD on September 11 and appreciated to 482AMD/1USD only on September 19 after the CB launched another intervention in the amount of $22.2million. By late September, the exchange rate was 473AMD/1USD. In early October, hardly has the national currency showed signs of devaluations, the CB intervened again with some $3 million on October 2 and kept the exchange rate at 473AMD/1USD. As of October 7, the exchange of the national dram fell to 472AMD/1USD. In December 2014, daily interventions ($54.7 million for 8-27 December) were a necessary to avoid hyper devaluation of the national currency. This and other tough regulatory measures of the Central Bank kept the exchange rate at 470AMD/1USD. In general, in the retail foreign exchange market of Armenia, the dram devaluated against dollar by 40% in 2014 (maximum 570AMD.1USD on Dec 17 and minimum 406 AMD/1USD in July).