BELGRADE (Serbia), July 10 (SeeNews) – The foreign exchange (FX) reserves held by Serbia's central bank grew to 14.0 billion euro ($15.8 billion) at the end of June, down by 388 million euro on a monthly comparison basis, the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) said on Friday.
The June decrease in gross FX reserves is attributable to the activities of the central bank on the domestic foreign exchange market destined to mitigate the adverse economic effect of the coronavirus pandemic and net deleveraging on the basis of foreign currency loans and securities worth 127.4 million euro, the NBS said in a statement.
The volume of trading on the Inter-bank Foreign Exchange Market (IFEM) in June decreased to 582.8 million euro, up by 132 million euro month-on-month, the NBS said.
The FX reserves held by NBS as at end-June were enough to cover about six months’ worth of imports of goods and services, NBS added.
In June, the dinar remained unchanged against the euro, and the NBS intervened by selling 155 million euro on the interbank market in order to tame excessive daily volatility of the exchange rate.
Net FX reserves (total reserves less banks’ FX balances on account of required reserves and other requirements) amounted to 11.8 billion euro at end-June, down from 12.185 billion euro in May.
($ = 0.884536 euro)