Foreign Reserves of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina

On December 31 2001, foreign reserves of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina were KM 2,66 billion. At the end of September last year, foreign reserves were around KM 1,235 billion, which means that they raised KM 1,4 billion in the last quarter of the last year.

"Those foreign reserves were already in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but they weren't in the banking system. The fact that they are now in the banking system should be positive for the economic development. Second, we expect that there will be some fallback from that figure now that people can actually get hold of the euro banknotes, which they couldn't up to the December 31. We would expect that foreign reserves to fallback from that very high level. But I don't expect that there will be enormous switch back to the euro. I think that a large proportion of the DEM that have been changed to KM or put on to deposit will stay in that form. But we won't know for sure for another few months", said Governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina Peter Nicholl at the press conference that was held in the Central Bank in Sarajevo on Wednesday, January 9, 2002.

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Duška Jurišić