Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 3
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
The Central Bank of Azerbaijan has no plans to attract new managers to manage foreign exchange reserves, CBA Deputy Chairman of Board Khagani Abdullayev told Trend Nov. 3.
The CBA managers are the WB Treasury, the Swiss bank UBS and the American JP Morgan.
"We have not been considering such radical actions on expanding the list of managers yet," he said. "We are working with former managers. We had certain adjustment in the work with foreign exchange reserves. We want to work with the Asian market."
It was previously reported that external managers control about $ 400 million of the CBA foreign exchange reserves. The CBA intends to increase the amount of such funds to $1 billion.
Thus, an increase in the effectiveness of the foreign exchange reserve management, along with the CBA transactions on the exchange rate stabilization are currently the main factors in the growth of strategic reserves. Their replenishment, as well as keeping a stable AZN-US dollar exchange rate are among the priorities of the CBA monetary policy. Azerbaijan's balance of payments surplus at the level of 15 percent of GDP is expected to be maintained in 2014. According to the minimal forecasts, including the estimates of the World Bank, EBRD, ADB and the international rating agencies, the surplus is projected at $ 11.6 billion.
In other words, an excessive inflow of foreign currency may reoccur on the domestic monetary market. The CBA can replenish reserves by $1.5 billion as part of sterilization.
The total amount of foreign exchange reserves held by the Central Bank amounted to $15.042 billion as of late September 2014, which is 6.29 percent more than in late 2013 and 13.4 percent as of early October 2013.
The official exchange rate is 0.7844 AZN/USD Nov. 3.
edited by CN
