February 1 (SeeNews) - Serbia's central bank, NBS, increased its total assets to 1.476 trillion dinars ($12.9 billion/11.9 billion euro) at the end of last year, a rise of 3% over 2015 and the highest amount since December 1999, according to NBS data.
Total domestic claims almost doubled to 9.459 billion dinars at end-December from 5.418 billion dinars a year earlier, chiefly due to a rise in claims on non-bank financial organisations, which jumped to 3.621 billion dinars from 1.213 billion dinars in December 2015.
The total foreign assets of NBS, in turn, edged down to 1.271 trillion dinars at end-2016 from 1.272 trillion dinars a year earlier.
The dinar reserves of Serbia's central bank decreased by 11.2% to 220.7 billion dinars and government deposits went down by 14.9% to 214.2 billion dinars.
Details follow (in millions of dinars):
|
Dec'16 |
Nov'16 |
Dec'15 |
Foreign assets |
1,270,944 |
1,220,430 |
1,272,499 |
Domestic claims |
9,459 |
6,724 |
5,418 |
Government deposits |
214,173 |
212,455 |
251,608 |
Foreign liabilities |
5,787 |
5,828 |
7,758 |
Total reserve money |
640,946 |
576,396 |
651,491 |
Total assets |
1,475,670 |
1,410,660 |
1,431,753 |
Total liabilities |
1,475,670 |
1,410,661 |
1,431,753 |
The growth of the central bank's total assets coincided with the upward trend of stock and bond prices in Serbia last year. Both share indices of the Belgrade Stock Exchange posted double-digit gains in 2016, with the blue-chip BELEX15 increasing 11.38% on the back of macroeconomic stability demonstrated by a significant improvement of most major indicators.
The rapid pace of NBS balance sheet expansion comes after the European Central Bank (ECB) became the last of the world’s major central banks to start a quantitative easing programme in March 2015. The ECB expanded its balance sheet to 3.38 trillion euro in December 2016, from 2.25 trillion euro in March 2015, by buying government bonds in an effort to reduce the indebtedness of euro area member states.
A similar trend was observed in Serbia. The total value of outstanding Treasury bonds in the country rose to 8.022 billion euro in November 2016 from 7.263 billion euro in March 2015, according to finance ministry data.
The total value of assets held by NBS at the end of March 2015 amounted to 1.332 trillion dinars.
(1 euro = 123.968 dinars)