Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 7
By Azad Hasanli - Trend:
The US Federal Reserve System’s further increasing the base rate won’t have a direct effect on the exchange rate of the Azerbaijani manat, Head of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov told Trend Sept. 7.
Rustamov said that serious influence can be expected in those emerging markets, where there is difficult situation with the exchange rate of national currencies.
“There are no direct threats for Azerbaijan, although certain indirect influence shouldn’t be excluded,” Rustamov noted.
However, the decisions of the US Federal Reserve System (Fed) will more affect emerging markets where the leak of the so-called speculative capital is observed, he added.
The last meeting of the US Federal Open Market Committee was held on August 1, 2018. Then the Fed kept the base rate unchanged at 2 percent.
Earlier, following the meeting on June 12-13, the base rate was raised by 0.25 percentage points to 1.75-2 percent from 1.5-1.75 percent per annum. In 2018, the base rate was also raised in March by 0.25 percentage points.
The Fed’s next meeting will be held on September 25-26.
Since April 2017, the exchange rate of Azerbaijani manat against the US dollar has been at 1.7 AZN/USD. Until March 2018, the exchange rate varied within 1.7031-1.7001 Azerbaijani manats per US dollar, and since March until today has been at a stable level of 1.7 AZN/USD.
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