Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 13
By Azad Hasanli - Trend:
Since the beginning of 2015, foreign exchange reserves owned by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), decreased by $4.29 billion (31.2 percent) - from $13.76 billion to $9.47 billion as of March 31, said the statistical data published April 13 on the website of the CBA.
During March, the Central Bank's foreign exchange reserves declined by $1.5 billion (1.39 percent) and by $5.24 billion (35.6 percent) compared to the same period of 2014.
The decline in the CBA foreign exchange reserves has been observed since July 2014. Earlier, this happened slowly (around $20-50 million). But their volume has sharply reduced (more than $1 billion monthly) since December. This is associated with an increase in demand for dollar supply in the country.
The CBA continues participating on the foreign exchange market of the country after the manat rate adjustment, CBA chairman of board Elman Rustamov said earlier.
Rustamov explained this by the still ongoing process of dollarization.
"Many bank customers keep their funds in dollars, and we believe that this trend will continue towards increasing the dollar savings," said Rustamov.
"We can't restrain the population from keeping their funds in dollars. But we have sufficient amount of currency reserve to allow the population to convert their funds into dollars without any problem," he added.
Part of the [currency reserve put up for sale] was directed for meeting the demands of the population, while the other part - for state needs, according to Rustamov.
The exchange rate of Azerbaijani manat to the US dollar was reduced to 1.05 manat for $1 from Feb.21 (compared to 0.7844 manats earlier), which corresponds to the cheapening of rate by 33.9 percent.
The official exchange rate on Apr.13 is 1.0537 AZN/USD.
Edited by CN
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