YEREVAN, December 2. /ARKA/. The legislative amendments that increase the amount of government-insured deposits 2.5 times have already come into force, Hermine Harutyunyan, the head of the Deposit Insurance Fund, told ARKA News Agency.

On October 26, the Armenian National Assembly passed a bill that raises the amount of government-insured private deposits in Armenia’s banks about 2.5 times to AMD 10 million against the present 4 million for dram deposits and AMD 5 million against the current 2 million for deposits in foreign currencies.

"Amendments apply not only to new deposits that will be formalized after the amendments' entry into legal force, but also to all the deposits formalized before that,” she said.

The following scheme is designed for dram and foreign currency deposits: if a dram deposit exceeds AMD 5 million, only the mentioned amount will be insured, if a dram deposit is less than AMD 5 million, it will be fully insured plus a part of a foreign currency deposit, i.e. difference between the dram deposit and AMD 5 million.

According to the fund's figures, individuals' deposits in banks have grown 10 times over one decade to more than AMD 1 086 billion, and the number of depositor has grown six fold to more than 1.7 million.

The Deposit Insurance Fund was established by the Central Bank of Armenia in 2005 for enhancing public confidence in banks.

In compliance with the law, banks transfer every quarter 0.05% of the amount of deposits on their accounts to the fund, and the fund runs these assets to ensure profitability.

The size of deposit compensation have been increased many times over ten years of the fund's activity, and this proves stability of the banking sector and the fund, which is able to ensure a quite high level of compensation. ($1 – AMD 482.81). ---0----