March 24 (SeeNews) - Croatia's central bank has injected 750 million kuna ($107 million/99 million euro) into the banking system through a regular open market operation on March 23, it said.
The central bank accepted all of the offers in the auction at a fixed interest rate of 0.05%, down from 0.30% at last week's auction, the central bank, HNB, said in a statement on Monday.
The settlement date for Monday's auction is March 25 and the maturity date is April 1.
This was HNB's second such auction since November 2018.
Last week, it placed a total of 4.45 billion kuna ($654 million/588 million euro) with local banks in two open market auctions, as part of its measures to provide additional liquidity to local banks amidst the coronavirus crisis. Back then, the central bank placed 3.8 billion kuna in a five-year structural repo auction, at a fixed interest rate of 0.25%, and a further 750 million kuna at a fixed interest rate of 0.30% in a regular open market operation.
Earlier this month, HNB also started buying government bonds, aiming to maintain the stability of the government debt market.
In addition, HNB has intervened three times on the foreign exchange market so far this month, selling a total of 1.21 billion euro to local banks in order to prop up weakening kuna currency. HNB's euro sale on the interbank market was its first such intervention in almost four and a half years.
(1 euro = 7.60661 kuna)