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| Gent Sejko |
During the months of January-June, the Bank of Albania bought 120 million euros in full from the foreign exchange market.
"For your information, we bought 120 million euros in the first 6 months and we will continue the purchases", said the Governor of BSH, Gent Sejko, local media say.
Compared to the same period of time a year ago during which the Central Bank bought about 48 million euros from the foreign exchange market, the figure has increased by 2.5 times. However, the euro continues to depreciate at a fast rate, being exchanged for less than 104.5 leks, 12.2 leks less than last year.
"The overvaluation of the lek and the devaluation of the euro is unjustified. In my opinion, there are other factors, besides these fundamental ones, that are leading to the devaluation of the euro", said banking expert Kliton Vaso.
The Bank of Albania continues to believe that the appreciation of the lek is a result of good economic performance, but for experts, mostly from formal sources, the fall of the euro is coming from dirty money and a little from speculation.
"The euro has started to depreciate strongly in the last two years. This also happened during the pandemic period when we had almost no tourism at all. So this factor seems not to be so fundamental in the devaluation of the European currency. I insist on other informal factors", added Vaso.
Next week, the Bank of Albania will hold a meeting with the second level banks for this.