OREANDA-NEWS. To achieve price stability, Belarus should use economic instruments and restrain interventions on the foreign exchange market, rather than artificially support the exchange rate of the domestic currency by means of spending reserves.

The National Bank of Belarus (NBB) made a statement to this effect in a release following the latest expanded meeting of the NBB Board. Belarus’ international reserves went up 0.7% (by USD 53.6 million) to USD 8.149 billion as of April 1, 2013. The likely decline in reserve assets was staved off partly at the expense of the next tranche of the EurAsEC stand-by loan, which arrived in the first quarter. Despite the fact that the burden of external debt payments grew significantly in 2013, Belarus honoured its external commitments, the NBB informed.

As reported by the National Bank, FX sales by households in Q1 2013 exceeded FX purchases by USD 44.9 million.