YEREVAN, December 22. /ARKA/. The euro went 0.24 percentage points down against the Armenian national currency on Wednesday, compared with Tuesday, and traded at 499.81 drams, on average, at Armenia’s forex market.

According to the central bank, the euro has shed 2.1% against the Armenian dram since early December and has sunk 5.5% since the beginning of this year.
Vilen Khachatryan, an economist, speaking Wednesday at a news conference, said that the policy pursued by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank will lead to the euro and the dollar parity in 2017.

On December 14, the Federal Reserve decided to tighten its monetary policy for the first time since December 2015. The U.S. regulator raised the key rate by 25 basic points from 0.25-0.5% to 0.5-0.75% and is expected to increase it two or three times in 2017. After the key rate rise in the United States the dollar climbed against the euro hitting the record high in 13 years.

“This will lead to the expensive dollar policy all over the world, and this will be accompanied by monetary wars,” Khachatryan said. “And the European Union will continue smoothing monetary conditions in a bid to spur the economy, and as a result, the euro will continue its downward motion and will become equal to the dollar soon.”

It means, he said, that the United States will start intensively importing and the European Union intensively exporting its already cheap products.

Bloomberg reports that traders at the global forex market with a 45-percent probability predict that the euro and the US dollar will become equal in 2017.

Deutsche Bank says the euro may even become cheaper than the dollar in the beginning of the next year.

At the same time, Wall Street analysts forecast hat the European currency may rise to 1.11 dollar before the end of this year. --0---