Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 5
By Fakhri Vakilov-Trend:
The proportion of people who prefer to store savings on deposits of commercial banks in foreign currency has grown in Uzbekistan, Trend reports referring to the report of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan on inflationary expectations of the population for the 2Q2019.
In June, the number of people wishing to convert their savings into cash dollars reached 26 percent, the highest figure since the beginning of the year.
During the reporting period, the share of those polled who prefer to keep savings on deposits in the national currency, decreased by 3 percentage points, amounted to 29 percent. On the other hand, the percentage of those who prefer to keep savings on deposits in foreign currency increased from 12 percent to 16 percent.
The Central Bank noted that the trend in the exchange rate of the national currency was very different from last year's trend, which influenced the structure of savings preferences of the population.
Thus, the expectations of survey participants at the exchange rate were formed under the influence of uncertainty regarding the level of volatility of the national currency in future periods.
Furthermore, the population’s expectations at the rate of soum for the end of the year remained practically unchanged at the level of 8,729 soums/dollar, while the expectations of entrepreneurs increased by 112 soums and amounted to 8,768 soums/dollar.
Recently Trend reported that an increase in exchange rate volatility was observed at auctions of the interbank currency market of Uzbekistan. Since the beginning of the year, the dollar against the soum increased by 12.5 percent from 8,336.25 soums on January 1 to 9,384 soums on August 21. Most of the growth occurred in August, when the dollar rose by 679 soums.
($1= 9384.38 soums on Sept. 5)
---
Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri