Skooje, 9 March 2022 

The denar is stable and will remain stable, the citizens should not fear at all. The National Bank has the institutional capacity and appropriate monetary instruments to maintain stability. In fact, the latest February report of the International Monetary Fund clearly states that the stability of the denar exchange rate is not in question at all, said the Governor of the National Bank, Anita Angelovska Bezhoska as a guest in Top Tema.

"For more than two decades, the National Bank has pursued a policy of maintaining a stable exchange rate of the denar against the euro, even in times of crisis, which shows that the central bank has the institutional capacity and adequate monetary instruments to maintain the exchange rate stability. For such a strategy to be sustainable, the central bank should have a sufficient level of foreign reserves. Our level of foreign reserves is currently higher than 3 billion euros, i.e. 3.3 billion euros. By comparison, we now have twice the level of foreign reserves than the one during the global financial crisis in 2008. "If we succeeded to deal with that crisis, with a twice lower level of foreign reserves, now there is really no reason for concern of the citizens," said Governor Angelovska Bezhoska.

She emphasized that whenever is crisis, there are often speculations about the exchange rate, and that it does not benefit anyone, but does general harm. Hence, the Governor appeals to the social responsibility of each individual, because macroeconomic stability depends on the stability of the exchange rate, which is crucial for the prosperity of our economy.

Regarding the speculations in the segment of the exchange offices operations, the Governor said that during the extraordinary control, which covered 64 exchange offices, a legal non-compliance with one fourth of them was identified. A legal procedure is underway, and after its finalization, a misdemeanor procedure will be initiated, while in two cases the license shall be revoked.

"Inspections continue. We will not allow any speculations in this segment, because we have a sufficient level of foreign reserves. The banks themselves have foreign exchange potential and perform exchange operations, just like the exchange offices, so that the citizens can buy foreign currency from the banks at any time. We also adopted an amendment to a bylaw. The purpose was to enable, in cases when a certain exchange office does not have enough foreign currency during the day, to buy foreign currency from banks. This has not been possible so far, and the reason is that till now the exchange offices always have a surplus of foreign currency on a net basis. "Even if we look at the data in March, when this pressure was evident at the aggregate level of the foreign exchange market, there is a surplus of foreign currency and that surplus of foreign currency is 17% higher than last year," said the Governor.