April 23 (SeeNews) - Serbia's central bank bought 42.5 million euro ($47.8 million) from commercial banks at an additional two-week forex swap auction on April 22 to prevent a potential more significant rise in short-term interest rates, it has said.
The central bank, NBS, bought euro from banks at 1,023 weighted average swap points, supplying them with a total of 5 billion dinars for 14 days, it said in a statement on Monday.
The transaction represents the fifth additional two-week swap auction carried out by the central bank since the beginning of the year. On January 28, the central bank bought 190 million euro from commercial banks, supplying them with 22.5 billion dinars, while on February 11 it repurchased 110.5 million euro, supplying 13.1 billion dinars to banks. Serbia's central bank bought 70 million euro from commercial banks at an additional two-week forex swap auction on February 25, supplying 5 billion dinars, and 42 million euro on March 25, supplying them with 5 billion dinars.
The NBS organises regular two-week and three-month foreign currency swap auctions to bolster the development of the interbank market and support banks in overcoming the problems arising from the limits in interbank trading in the money market.
($ = 0.889217 euro)