YEREVAN, March 22. /ARKA/. Artificially overrated value of Armenian national currency has struck hard at local manufacturers, Vahan Hovhannisyan, the head of Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutyun’ faction in National Assembly, said Friday at a briefing.

The lawmaker said that the Armenian authorities, attracted loans from the outside and plunged into new debts for injecting their foreign currency reserves in foreign exchange market every month to retain the national currency’s value.

But these resources dwindled and the drum plummeted against the dollar.

“The artificially overrated value of Armenian dram has struck hard at local manufacturers, since they make all their pays with the expensive dram – they are left with no room to export even their competitive products,” Hovhannisyan said.

In March 2009, after the Central Bank of Armenia announced the policy of floating exchange rate, the dram weakened 66.36 percentage points against the dollar to AMD 372.11 per one dollar.

The central bank’s specialists said then that the exchange rate would range between AMD 360 and AMD 380 per one dollar in 2009.

The exchange rate fluctuated within the predicted range until recently, but has dropped by 19.82 points from AMD 384.54 to AMD 404.36 per one dollar over the period between March 1 and 18.

Hovhannisyan said the artificial measures caused industrial downturn and reduction of export in all sectors, excluding one or two.

Armenia’s foreign gross reserves shrank 3.2% or by $65 million in January 2010, compared with December 2009, to $1938.4 million.

They have grown by $596.6 million since the beginning of 2009 to $2003.41 by late December..-0---