YEREVAN, November 12. /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia will pursue a floating exchange rate policy in 2015, just as this year, and will interfere only in the event of sharp fluctuations, Arthur Javadyan, chairman of the regulator, said Tuesday when specking in the National Assembly of Armenia over the draft budget for 2015.
He said that the current fluctuations in the Russian national currency’s exchange rates will have no direct impacts on Armenia’s economy.
“Exports to Russia make up only 20% of Armenia’s exports, and we see no grounds for forecasting considerable impacts,” he said. “Possible impacts may depend only on the currency economic entities have chosen in their contracts.”
Javadyan also said that the central bank, taking into account macroeconomic, regional and international factors, forecasts inflation at 4-4.5% for 2015.
The draft government budget for 2015 calls for 1 trillion and 221 billion drams in revenues (nearly $2.9 billion) and 1 trillion and 337 billion drams in spending ($3.1 billion). The projected deficit is 116.6 billion drams.
Social spending in the budget totals about 385.6 billion – by 23.5 billion more than a similar indicator of the previous year’s budget.
GDP is predicted to amount 4867.5 billion in 2015, its growth is projected at 4.1% and deflator at 3.3%.
According to the National Statistical Service of Armenia, the U.S. dollar traded at 409.93 drams, on average, at Armenia’s forex market in October after rising 0.27 percentage points, compared with September.
The Armenian national currency was devaluating in the beginning of this year, and the devaluation continued until April.
Remarkable is that the Armenian dram started going down in the beginning of this year and continued its downward motion until April. In particular, the dollar traded at 407.35 drams in January, at 411.54 drams in February, at 411.04 drams in March and at 414.31 drams in April. After that, the Armenian national currency started gradually going up. As a result, the dollar traded at 413.32 drams in May, at 410.90 drams in June, at 407.13 drams in July and at 409.49 drams in August.
On October 31, the U.S. dollar traded at 411.74 drams, on average. —0—–
