YEREVAN, June 21. /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia said today it has applied sanctions against several currency exchange offices for anti-competitive behavior.

It specified that some of these exchange offices were warned against such behavior, some others were penalized and the operation of some others was suspended..

"Since October 5, 2021, there have been manifestations of anti-competitive agreement and abuse of exchange rates in the foreign exchange market of Armenia," the regulator said in a statement.

The Central Bank said it found that a number of exchange offices, violating the requirements of the legislation, entered into an anti-competitive agreement on the establishment of unified wholesale exchange rates.

The exchange rates agreed between them were published on information platform rate.am, which affected the behavior of other exchange offices.

The exchange rate of the dram has strengthened about 25% against USD and Euro over the last several months. -0-