The National Bank of Georgia has been purchasing foreign currency by evading FX auctions since 2020. Central bank conducts it through a platform of FX exchange system Bloomberg – BMatch. According to the statistics of the National Bank, the volume of these transactions in 2020-2021 was small, although in July purchases increased five times and reached US$110 million.
As the statistics of the Bank reveals, the program for the purchase of currency by the National Bank on the BMatch platform was activated against the background of the strengthening of the lari, at this time NBG expanded the withdrawal of U.S. dollar resources from the market.
Together with BMatch, the regulator resumed foreign exchange interventions on August 1 and purchased US$10 million in the market.
“Currently, the market allows us to buy currency, so we are actively intervening. For example […} in July we bought US$110 million through Bloomberg BMatch platform, at the same time we bought US$10 million on Monday, so we use this leverage,” said Koba Gvenetadze, President of the National Bank of Georgia.
With the purchased resources the Bank increased FX reserves of the country. The National Bank will publish its updated statistics on reserves on August 8. As of July, Georgia's foreign exchange reserves amount to US$3.92 billion.
