April 11 (SeeNews) - The foreign exchange (FX) reserves held by Serbia's central bank rose to 11.441 billion euro ($12.9 billion) at the end of March, up by 42.1 million euro on a monthly comparison basis, the National Bank of Serbia (NBS) said on Thursday.
The increase in gross FX reserves in March was mostly the result of the interventions of the central bank on the interbank FX market, grants, and reserves management, NBS said in a statement.
The volume of trading on the interbank foreign exchange market in March increased to 474.4 million euro, up by 40.8 million euro month-on-month.
The FX reserves held by NBS as at end-March were enough to cover about five months’ worth of imports of goods and services, NBS said.
In March, the dinar strengthened nominally 0.2% against the euro, and the NBS intervened by buying 135 million euro on the interbank market in order to tame excessive daily volatility of the exchange rate.
Net FX reserves (total reserves less banks’ FX balances on account of required reserves and other requirements) came at 8.963 billion euro at end-March, slightly up from 8.96 billion euro a month earlier.
($ = 0.888152 euro)