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DOES CB MISLEAD PEOPLE?
[07:40 pm] 15 February, 2007

The RA Central Bank has been fixing the exchange rate
of the currency since the day of its foundation.

The information on the currency rate is spread via
various organizations, commercial banks and news
reels.

All state and commercial documents update the currency
rate after learning the current exchange rate.
Throughout thirteen years of its existence, the CB has
spread news on the next day’s exchange rate just at
the turn of each working day.

Nevertheless, over the past 3 months the CB has given
information for the currency vibrations within the
same day.

While commenting on the above-mentioned innovation of
the Central Bank, Zarouhi Barsegyan, press secretary
the CB said, `Our sociological survey revealed that
the `expression the CB has fixed’ misleads people as
they sit down thinking that someone in the CB decides
the currency rate. That’s why, we changed the phrase
with the following one `these rates are fixed in the
market’. Nothing but the phrase has been changed.’

Asked why the expression changed so late or by which
legal acts it is regulated, the press secretary of the
CB said, `Our interior regulations have changed which
are confidential and cannot be divulged. Besides, the
CB has drafted a packet of legislative amendments
which the bank will submit to the RA NA in the nearest
future’.

We can only add that by this step, the CB merely
attempts to get rid of suspects and wide-spread
opinion according to which the dram devaluation in
Armenia is an artificial phenomenon and its author is
the CB.

Thus, the RA CB no more fixes the rate of the dollar;
it merely copies the rate from various exchanges,
multiples and divides the numbers and gets the average
sum which spreads in the evening.