Foreign currency exchange market in panic

08/09/2009

Yesterday a lot of banks stopped selling foreign currency. According to our information, the problem of keeping the national currency exchange rate stabile is so serious that the government has decided to make a critical step. Specifically, they have decided to increase the capacity of compulsory bank credit reserves from 12% to 30%. This is an official reserve fund capacity which the banks have to keep with the Central Bank. By this decision the government wants to have more cash under the control of the Central Bank (most of which in US dollar), after which it will be easier for the CB to make the trade banks (in an unofficial manner) to sell a part of the reserved money if needed for the purpose of keeping the exchange rate of dram stabile. In fact it is a new tool for keeping the currency exchange rates stabile, which has not been used anywhere in the world yet.