YEREVAN, February 5. /ARKA/. An Armenian daily ‘Haykakan Zhamanak’ (Armenian Time) says in an apparent effort to prevent a renewed depreciation of the national currency, the dram, the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) injected on February 4 over $29 million in the local currency market.

According to the newspaper, this was the first and ‘impressive’ currency intervention, made by the Central Bank recently.

"This means a rising demand for hard currency, which may lead to a significant depreciation of the dram. However, given that the demand did not cause panic among the population, one can say that the situation will be controlled by the Central Bank for a long time," the newspaper says.

The average market exchange rate of US dollar against the dram on February 4 rose by 0.63 points to 492.41 drams. On Feb. 3 the dollar’s rate rose above 490 drams for the first time after a sharp devaluation of the Armenian dram in late 2014. Armenian dram thus depreciated by 1.5% since the beginning of 2016. -0-