YEREVAN, November 22. /ARKA/. Armenia’s national currency, the dram and the banking system of the country are marking their 18th anniversary today, the Union of Armenian Banks said. It said the anniversary will be marked together with the Central Bank of Armenia.

The process of replacing Soviet rubles with the national currency was launched on November 22, 1993. It took about a week. The Armenian dram was traded at 14.5 drams for one U.S. dollar, and the transition to a floating exchange rate raised the exchange rate by year-end almost 5 times to 75 drams per U.S. dollar.

Today, Armenia continues to maintain the floating exchange rate policy. The USD is traded now at 384.32 drams.

In early 90s Armenia was one of the first countries in terms of the number of banks per 1 million population. There were 60 local and 15 foreign banks. At present, Armenia has 21 bank with 425 branches.

According to the Central Bank of Armenia, Armenian banking system’s profit for the first 9 months this year increased by 18.4% to 24.5 billion drams, their total capital amounted to 343.1 billion drams, and the total credit investments, including deposits , factoring and leasing to more than 1185 billion drams. -0-