25/12/2014 12:43
Haykakan Zhamanak: Cash shortage reported in provinces
‘Haykakan Zhamanak’ says that dram shortages were reported in Armenian provinces yesterday. In particular, many citizens could not receive their wages from ATMs and when they visited banks, they were told that the banks did not have cash either.
“According to our sources, there are two reasons. First, people received their wages for the end of the year and they are now spending money on purchases ahead of the New Year. The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) recently raised the reserve requirement for foreign currency from 12% to 24% so banks have to send a huge share of their cash in drams to CBA and they lack cash drams. We were informed that many banks had to sell their foreign currency to deal with the problem and in this way the situation has improved in the past three days. Yet this make many think that the financial market has not yet overcome the December shock,” the daily writes.