ArmInfo. During the current week, the equal activeness on the stock exchange and the interbank forex market has prevented the Armenian dram from depreciation. On November 16-20, NASDAQ OMX Armenia was active on Wednesday and Thursday only, registering the same amount of transactions as the interbank forex market throughout the week without the Central Bank's intervention. As a result, the AMD/USD exchange rate rose from 473 AMD/$1 to 478 AMD/$1 during the first week of November. It grew to 483 AMD/$1 during the second week of November and stood at that level on November 13-20.
According to the CBA press office, on November 16-20, NASDAQ OMX Armenia was active on Wednesday and Thursday - the transactions totaled $3.080 mln and formed the average exchange rate at 482.67 AMD/1USD. The transactions on the interbank forex market totaled $4.135 mln, forming the average exchange rate at the level of 482.63 AMD/1USD. The latest large interventions of the Central Bank were on November 13 - $19.6 mln, on October 2 - supposedly $6 mln, on September 19 - $22.2 mln and August 28 - $95 mln.
The source says that on November 16-20, on the intrabank currency market (transactions with customers) the banks bought $81.7 mln (22% rise versus the previous week) at the average exchange rate of 480.88 AMD/$1, and sold $74.02 mln (0.1% rise) at the average exchange rate of 482.89 AMD/$1. In the meantime, the banks bought 7.3 mln EUR (down 66%) at the average exchange rate of 512.64 AMD/1EUR, and sold 11.5 mln EUR (down 11.5%) at the exchange rate of 517.89 AMD/1EUR. The banks also bought 1.1 bln RUR (more than 2-fold growth) at the average exchange rate of 7.31 AMD/1RUR and sold 342.7 mln RUR (84% decline) at the exchange rate of 7.43 AMD/1RUR.
During the previous week (November 9-15) the Armenian banks provided AMD loans worth 48.9 bln AMD and USD loans worth $31.3 mln. As compared with the previous week (November 2-8), AMD loans decreased by 19.9% and the ones in terms of USD fell by 14.2%.
To recall, during the last months of 2014 the forex market of Armenia registered a sharp rise of the AMD/USD exchange rate - over 570 AMD/1USD. From October through December 17, 2014, AMD depreciated by almost 45% in the retail forex market of Armenia, then it appreciated by 25% on Dec 18-20, staring depreciating against on Dec 22. On Dec 27, the average AMD/USD exchange rate was 470 AMD/$1, the AMD/EUR exchange rate was 574 AMD/1EUR, the AMD/RUR exchange rate was 8.7 AMD/1RUR. Over 2014, NASDAQ OMX Armenia registered transactions worth a total of $744.5 mln, with the biggest amount falling on November ($117 mln). Over the year the exchange rate on NASDAQ OMX Armenia rose from 407.14 to 560 AMD/$1 (on Dec 17 the exchange rate rose by 22%), dropping to 470 AMD/$1 by Dec 27. In 2014, in the retail forex market of Armenia, the AMD depreciated against USD by 40%, with the maximum indicator (570 AMD) fixed on Dec 17 and the minimum (406 AMD) registered in July. In the course of the 9 months of 2015, in the retail forex market AMD appreciated from 477 to 473 against USD; from 571.5 to 532 against EUR, at the same time depreciating from 8.2 to 7.2 against RUR. In October, the average USD/AMD exchange rate was floating. On October 30, it made up 473 AMD/1$. The national currency appreciated against EUR (520 AMD/1EUR) and appreciated against RUR (7.5 AMD/1RUR). In November the Armenian dram started showing signs of devaluation again, depreciating against USD (483 AMD/$1). At the same time the dram appreciated against EUR (517 AMD/1EUR), with the AMD/RUR exchange rate standing at 7.5 AMD/1RUR as of Nov 20.
