The National Bank of Slovakia reported a 663 million Slovakian Koruna (SKK) loss for last year, bank spokesman Igor Barat disclosed. The financial result represented a significant improvement over the SKK 36.3 billion loss of 2004. This was attributed to the slowdown in the appreciation of the crown against its reference currency the euro. In 2005 the koruna-euro exchange rate strengthened by 2.44% while it went up by 5.75% during the course of 2004. In contrast the koruna weakened against the dollar by 12.1%. In addition the central bank incurred lower costs of intervention on the forex market.
The total volume of interventions amounted to 3.5 billion euro. It bought 3 billion euro at the beginning of the year when the crown was especially strong and sold 500 million euro in the middle of the year to prevent excessive weakening of the local currency.
According to the Athens-based Kathimerini daily, bank accounts held by Albanian emigrants in Greece amount to some half a million euro, or about 9% of the poor Balkan country's GDP. Overall emigrant savings in Greece are estimated at over 3.5 billion euro. Out of the 1.1 million emigrants residing in the EU member state, Albanians account for 57.5% (or 632,500), followed by Bulgarians representing a significantly smaller 4.6% share. According to bank experts cited by the newspaper, the annual average household income of economic emigrants in Greece adds up 12,000 euro. The central bank of Albania is considering the implementation of active measures for strengthening bank intermediation services which will allow the legal transfer of emigrant funds through the system. In addition, emigrant remittances are the major source of foreign trade deficit financing. Their value has been reported at 295 million euros in the third quarter of last year, covering almost 70% of the foreign deficit.
News from Euromoney Group sources