ArmInfo. The Central Bank of Armenia smoothly curbs the exchange rate growth due to weekly interventions. This week the Central Bank made the biggest intervention (23.8 mln USD) on the forex inter-bank on Friday. As a result, after devaluating against USD from 482 to an average of 486 AMD, on January 15 the Armenian dram was fixed at 485 due to the CB intervention ($32.4 mln) and stood at 485 within the following three days. Afterwards, on January 19 the AMD began devaluating again. The CB had to make another intervention, due to which, on January 22, the AMD exchange rate stopped at 487 AMD/1USD. On January 29, however, at the moment of the CB intervention, AMD depreciated to 489 against $1 (versus 476 AMD/$1 a year before). Amid the aggravating financial and economic crisis in Russia and the dropping prices of oil and metallurgy, which is one of the key export items of Armenia, by late 2016 the AMD/USD exchange rate may rise to 540-550 AMD/$1.
According to the CB press office, NASDAQ OMX Armenia was not active over the last two weeks of January. On January 25 through 29, the interbank forex market operated three days (except Monday and
Thursday), with the largest operations fixed on Tuesday (1.4 mln USD) and the CB intervention made on Friday ($23.8 mln). The total amount of the transactions for the week was $25.4 mln and the average
exchange rate was 487.93 AMD/1USD. To note, the first large intervention of the Central Bank in 2016 was on January 15 ($32.4 mln) and January 29 ($23.8 mln), while in 2015 the large interventions were on August 28 - $95 mln, September 19 - $22.2 mln, November 13 - $19.6 mln and smaller ones on December 11 - more than $6 million and on October 2 - $6 mln.
The source says that on January 25-29, on the intrabank currency market (transactions with customers) the banks bought $75.7 mln (12% growth versus the previous week) at the average exchange rate of
487.13 AMD/$1, and sold $91.4 mln (23% growth versus the previous week) at the average exchange rate of 489.05 AMD/$1. In the meantime, the banks bought 5.4 mln EUR (down 52%) at the average exchange rate of 527.37 AMD/1EUR, and sold 9.2 mln EUR (weekly decline by 47%) at the exchange rate of 532.63 AMD/1EUR. The banks also bought 1.1 bln RUR at the average exchange rate of 6.11 AMD/1RUR and sold 527.2 mln RUR (39% weekly growth) at the exchange rate of 6.20 AMD/1RUR.
During the previous week (January 18-January 24) the Armenian banks provided AMD loans worth 37.7 bln AMD and USD loans worth 37 mln USD. As compared with the previous week (January 11-17), AMD loans decreased by 2.6% and the ones in terms of USD rose by 12.8%.
To recall, during 11 months of 2015 on the retail foreign exchange market of Armenia AMD weakened against USD from 477 to 483 AMD/$1 and strengthened against EUR from 571.5 to 512 AMD/1EUR and against Russian ruble from 8.2 to 7.4 AMD/1 RUR. Continuing signs of depreciation in December weakened AMD against USD to 485 AMD/$1 by December 11, against EUR to 530 AMD/1EUR, while AMD strengthened against Russian Ruble to 7.1 AMD/1RUR. But following almost daily interventions of Central Bank between December 14-28 led AMD to strengthening against USD to 482 AMD/$1, against EURO-to 529AMD/1EUR, against Russian Ruble to 6.9 AMD/1 RUR. AMD depreciated amid decline
of foreign trade turnover (more than 20%), while import dropped more significantly (almost 27%) than export (higher than 2%) as well as decline of transfers inflow to Armenia more than by 30%, and this
happened in conditions of low buying capacity of the population and low economic activity in the country. Since 2016, despite the weekly interventions of the Central Bank, AMD started depreciating again on
the retail foreign exchange market of Armenia and stood at 489 AMD/1USD by January 29. At the same time AMD depreciated against EUR to 534 AMD/1EUR and appreciated against RUR to 6.5 AMD/1RUR.
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