Otar Nadaraia, Chief Economist of TBC Group, deeply believes that the National Bank of Georgia continued to replenish its reserves in April, and in total, more than USD 200 million were purchased between March and April. He stated this during an interview with TV-program "Business Morning".
According to Nadaraia, at this stage, foreign exchange inflows are strong, and in addition, the weakening of USD in the global market is additionally helping GEL exchange rate.
"As you know, we had quite optimistic expectations in the case of lari. We also had an opinion in December that this was not a lari shock, because it does not affect the main foreign exchange inflows, which include remittances, tourism and other inflows. On the contrary, imports have actually decreased, which has led to the strengthening of lari. There is an excess supply of USD in the market at the moment, which allows the National Bank to replenish its reserves by a very significant amount. After the purchase of USD 102 million in March, we think that in April, the National Bank probably purchased more than USD 200 million in total. We do not have exact numbers, this information will be available later. Therefore, in this regard, we can say that at this stage, foreign exchange inflows are strong, and, of course, the weakening of the USD in the international market helps the USD-GEL pair," said the chief economist of TBC Group.
