{"id":85462,"date":"2015-03-13T15:25:52","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T15:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/2015\/03\/13\/242510\/"},"modified":"2024-12-15T13:16:50","modified_gmt":"2024-12-15T13:16:50","slug":"share-of-deposits-in-usd-grows-by-4-2-p-p-to-almost-64-percent-central-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/2015\/03\/13\/85462\/","title":{"rendered":"Share of deposits in USD grows by 4.2 p.p. to almost 64 percent \u2013 central bank"},"content":{"rendered":"

YEREVAN, March 13. \/ ARKA \/.<\/strong> The share of deposits in Armenian banks kept in US dollars grew last year by 4.2 percentage points from the previous year to 63.9%, the Central Bank said in its monthly bulletin for December 2014.<\/p>\n

The growth was prompted by a sharp devaluation of the Armenian national currency, the dram, in the last months of 2014 making people to convert their savings from the national currency to hard one.<\/p>\n

The trend affected largely demand deposits whose share in 2014 December fell by almost 10% to 180.5 billion drams, while demand deposits in USD grew by 6.6% to the equivalent of 846.7 billion drams.<\/p>\n

According to the Central Bank, the share of private demand deposits in USD in 2014 December made 74.4% of the total deposits growing by 3 percentage points from the previous month and by 3.2 percentage points from December 2013.<\/p>\n

The same trend was observed in 2009, when the share of deposits in USD grew from 44.1% in 2008 to 66.6% in 2009 March. That happened right after the Central Bank shifted to the so-called floating exchange rate policy. By the end of 2009 this indicator reached the historical high of 68.6%.<\/p>\n

In order to stabilize the foreign exchange market, in 2014 December the regulator increased the mandatory reserve requirement in foreign currency to 24%. Prior to that the minimum amount of reserve requirement for Armenian banks was 12% – 9% were to be in drams and 3% in US dollars. Today, the reserve requirement is lowered to 20%, but it still remains high.<\/p>\n

This decision caused a shortage of dram liquidity in commercial banks, resulting in higher interest rates. Thus, interest rates on deposits in drams rose to 16-18% from 13-14% a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Experts believe that large amount of imports (about 45% of GDP), private money transfers (17% of GDP) and high inflationary expectations of the people are\u00a0 the main obstacles to cutting the level of dollarization.-0-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The share of deposits in Armenian banks kept in US dollars grew last year by 4.2 percentage points from the previous year to 63.9%, the Central Bank said in its monthly bulletin for December 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":157940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","tstyn_error":""},"categories":[12139,9216],"tags":[15865,12164,15419],"class_list":["post-85462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy-en","category-news","tag-central-bank-2","tag-growth-2"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t