YEREVAN, July 29. /ARKA/. Average weighted US exchange rate rose by 0.02% to AMD410.50 at NASDAQ OMX Armenia last week. The trading amounted to a total of 22.28 million US dollars over the week, an increase of 72.45% against the week before. Average exchange rate of greenback grew by 0.13% and was 411.85 drams on Saturday. The rise in US currency exchange rate was primarily due to maintained demand by businesses and individuals. The rate drop at FOREX international foreign currency market contributed to less attractive assets.

Next week the USD rate is expected to consolidate or slightly increase as some dealers go on increasing their positions amid the USD failure to get stuck lower of supportive 410.0 drams. However, bearing in mind the expected negative USD dynamics against its main competitors, we can suppose the American currency will hardly rise significantly.
However, the USD will be rising as people and businesses buy more dollars. Indeed, according to the Central Bank of Armenia, net sales of foreign exchange by commercial banks last week upped 25.68% from last week to 15,855 million.

We expect the USD to be sold at 409.0 – 414.0 drams this week in Armenia.
The cost of euro last week was determined by developments at the global currency market where the EUR/USD rose by 1.05% to 1.3279 and the dynamics of the dram against the U.S. currency.
The European currency increased as macroeconomic statistics from euro zone continued improving. Meantime, news form the USA confirmed once again positive changes in the biggest economy of the world have not stabilized yet. Indeed, the unemployed data from US labor market was slightly above the forecast, and the previous data saw a downward review. Changed order volumes for durables, transport sector exclusive, remained unchanged in June against May, despite the 0.5% increase projection.
This prompted rising speculation of need for continuing the program of quantitative easing in the previous amount. As a result, the average selling rate of cash euro in Armenia last week rose 1.28% to 548.79 drams.

The average selling rate of cash Russian ruble last week declined by 0.47% to 12.76 drams due to the dropping cost of the Russian currency against the U.S. dollar at international currency markets. -0-

By Mikael Verdyan, FOREX CLUB analysts, written specially for ARKA news agency.
The views of the author may not necessarily represent those of the agency