OREANDA-NEWS. January 10, 2014. The official reserve assets grew by 305 million dollars in 2013, reaching 2 billion 820.6 million dollars on 31 December, according the National Bank of Moldova’s (BNM) data.

The foreign-exchange reserves increased due to purchases of currency by the National Bank of Moldova, receiving grants from the Finance Ministry, the revenues resulting from managing foreign-exchange reserves and the fluctuation of the component currencies against the dollar.

The National Bank of Moldova made the largest interventions in August and September, when all types of transactions, including purchases, exceeded 200 million dollars. Experts then said that the bank’s intervention in the market led to the gradual depreciation of the national currency. In response, BNM officials said they took advantage of the market surplus to supplement the foreign-exchange reserves, which reached their record high by the end of the year.

Thus, BNM in August conducted operations on the interbank foreign exchange market amounting to 253.7 million dollars, purchases amounting to 134.10 million dollars. BNM’s interbank foreign exchange market operations in September dropped to 216.5 million dollars, purchases exceeding 77 million dollars.

The central bank’s operations on the foreign exchange market were insignificant in early 2013, BNM purchasing 10 million dollars each month between February and May. Only in July did BNM intervene on the market by making purchases amounting to nearly 36 million dollars.

Grant inflows also increased the official reserve assets. Thus, just in November, the assets’ increase was also caused by the Finance Ministry’s grants from the European Commission amounting to 20.29 million dollars (the equivalent of 15 million euro).

The record high was reached on 14 December, when the official reserve assets amounted to 2,827 billion dollars.

The official reserve assets grew by 549,7 million dollars in 2012, to 2, 515 billion dollars, reached on 31 December. According to BNM, the foreign-exchange reserves in 2012 rose two times higher than in 2011, when they increased by 248 million dollars, amounting to 1 billion 965.3 million dollars.