According to the observations of consumers for a few days Armenian currency exchange offices have sharply limited the US dollar sale to the population. "In all likelihood, the central bank has obliged the currency exchange offices to sell the currency in a limited number" - suggests an economist, a senior researcher at the Institute of Economics of NAS RA Vilen Khachatryan.
"This is done in order to curb agiotage buying of the dollar by the population due to negative expectations, and to prevent currency speculation," - he said at a press conference of August 24. V. Khachatryan said that currently Armenia's international reserves are sufficient to establish the range of permissible exchange rate fluctuations pair of AMD / US dollar to deter the market from the hype.
Meanwhile, it is appropriate to note that, according to the Central Bank's data the gross international reserves of Armenia in 2014 decreased by 35% (from $ 2.3 billion to $ 1.5 billion), then in January-July 2015 they managed to recover it only partially - to $ 1.7 billion, with growth in January-July, up 14.3%, of which 10.1% occurred in July.
To ote that as of August 24, 2015 in the retail forex market Armenian dram devalued against the US dollar to 485.5 AMD / $ 1, against 475.5 AMD / $ 1 in early January of this year and 409.5 AMD / $ 1 in August 2014.