Foreign reserve growth slows in September

The National Bank on Tuesday announced its foreign currency reserves had increased by nearly 215 million euros in September to a total of 16.65bn euros. The growth in September is the lowest this year, caused by the reduction in foreign currency inflows to the reserve accompanied by an increase in outflows. NBR”s foreign reserve in August climbed approximately 1.6bn euros, after having increased by nearly 1.1bn euros in July. NBR data indicate almost 949 million euros in foreign currency inflows for September, much less than in August, when the inflows totalled 2.1bn euros. The NBR stopped publishing detailed foreign currency inflow data earlier this year in order to make its operations on the forex market less predictable. Dealers, however, say that most of the inflows probably came in the form of direct purchases from the market, since there were no substantial revenues from privatisations or other sources last month. They also suspect that the NBR was behind the larger acquisitions in the last half of the month, as it wanted to lead people to believe speculative investors were leaving the market after the decisions to cut interest rates. ZF