YEREVAN, July 21. /ARKA/. The average interest rate on inter-and –intra bank repos in Armenia in the second quarter of 2011 rose by 1.79 percentage points to 9.95% if compared to the first quarter, the press service of the Central Bank said after its Board meeting.

According to a Board statement, compared with the previous quarter interest rates rose in the primary market of government bonds. Average interest rate on a bond with a 12 month maturity increased by 1.47 pp to 9.37% and the average interest rate on a mid-term bonds rose by 0.16 pp to 13.85%. In the second quarter of 2011 the average exchange rate of dram depreciated against the U.S. dollar by 2.15% to 374.18 drams and by 7.08% against euro to 539.15 euros.

The statement says that the growth in lending in the past 12 months was more than 38% with lending in drams seeing a dramatic rise, the bulk of which went to agriculture.

"Nevertheless, the volume of foreign currency lending continues to be at a fairly high level. Thus, over the past 12-month period lending in drams grew by 23.5%, while lending in foreign currency by 50.3%,’ the statement said.

However, despite the fact banks transactions in foreign currency prevailed, the dependence on USD in terms of obligations continues to rise. In particular, dram deposits grew by 48.8%, foreign currency deposits by 18.2%, which led to a 4% rise in dollarization level, the CB Board said. -0-