Amount of money in circulation grows to 74.8 bln soms in Kyrgyzstan

The amount of money in circulation in Kyrgyzstan increased by 28.2 percent - up to 74.8 billion soms in 2016. The National Bank of the country reported.

It was noted that the country's monetary base grew by 27.6 percent over the past year, reaching at the end of the year 85.6 billion soms. In 2015, it increased by only 4 percent.

The monetary base is the means of population (money in circulation) and the reserves of financial (deposit) organizations. It does not include all funds of banks.

Throughout the year, the banking system had fairly high level of excess reserves. Their average daily volume reached 11.6 billion soms. After the sterilization operations, it decreased to 1.4 billion.

At the end of the year, the volume of excess reserves amounted to 16.2 billion soms. National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic again conducted sterilization operations, and excess reserves decreased to 3.5 billion.

To reduce the amount of excess money, the National Bank sold securities and placed the funds of commercial banks on overnight deposits. 

 During 2016, interventions in the domestic foreign exchange market were carried out only in order to smooth sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate. During 2016, the volume of foreign currency purchases amounted to $ 29.1 million.

The interbank foreign exchange market operations increased liquidity of KGS by 1.5 billion soms.

During the 2016, exchange rate of som to US dollar has strengthened by 8.8 percent. The volume of gross international reserves of the National Bank for the year amounted to $ 1.97 billion and grew by 10.7 percent.