BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 16. The strengthening of the nominal effective rate of the manat acted as one of the main factors curbing the import of inflation, Trend reports via preliminary data of the Azerbaijani Central Bank's (CBA) monetary policy review.
According to the review, in 2022, the average daily official exchange rate of the manat against the dollar was 1.7 manat.
"The foreign currency purchase and sale rates set by banks were close to the official rate. Thus, the average daily purchase rate of 1 US dollar by commercial banks amounted to 1.6971 manat, and the selling rate - 1.7024 manat," the review said.
Last year, the manat exchange rate mainly strengthened against the currencies of the trading partner countries. So, the manat rose against the euro, Turkish lira, British pound sterling, Kazakh tenge, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, Ukrainian hryvnia, Russian ruble, and Georgian lari.
"The dynamics of bilateral rates also affected the dynamics of the multilateral rate. In general, during the reporting period, the nominal effective rate of the manat in the total weight of non-oil trade strengthened by 8.4 percent, and the real effective rate - by 3.6 percent,” the review noted.
“The inflation decline in Azerbaijan below the level of average inflation in partner countries has affected the real effective exchange rate," added the review.
In December 2022, the annual inflation in the country totaled 14.4 percent, which is 1.2 percentage points below the peak level (15.6 percent in September), and the food inflation was 19 percent.