YEREVAN, March 15. /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia hopes that bank deposits in national currency will grow by five percent and those in foreign currencies reduce.

Vahe Vardanyan, chief of the central bank’s financial system policy division, said that loans in drams and in foreign currencies are equal, while ratio between liabilities in national and foreign currencies is 30% to 70%.

“We hope for a five-percent improvement for both loans and liabilities,” he said.

Things may change in favor to Armenian dram.

It means deposits in foreign currencies may shrink by five percentage points to 65%, narrowing the difference by 10%, and share of loans in foreign currencies may reduce to 45%.

Vardanyan also expressed hope that interest rates on deposits in foreign currencies will be lowered at least by two percentage points.

As a result, depositors will have option to keep their money in foreign currencies or drams.

The chief of the central bank thinks that banks will prefer rather to lower interest rates on deposits in foreign currencies than to raise interest on dram deposits.

At the same time, Vardanyan doesn’t deny that these speculations are quite approximate and doesn’t rule out that some banks may raise interest rates on dram deposits. ---0---