Situation Report on the Monetary Development of Slovakia in November 2008

1. Consumer prices, measured by the harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP), increased by 0.1% in November, as compared with the previous month. The year-on-year growth rate of headline inflation was 3.9%. The core inflation (excl. energy and unprocessed foodstuff prices) reached a year-on-year growth rate 4.0%.

2. Consumer prices measured by the CPI increased by 0.2% in November, when compared with the previous month. The year-on-year rate of headline inflation was 4.9% and that of core inflation was 4.1%.

3. The real gross domestic product increased by 7.0% in the third quarter of 2008.

4. Monetary aggregate M3 (in accordance with the ECB methodology) decreased by SKK 12.8 billion on a month-on-month basis in October, while its year-on-year growth rate decreased to 5.1% in comparison with the September figure.

5. The total volume of claims of monetary financial institutions (MFI) vis-a-vis residents (incl. securities issued by customers and held by the MFI sector, according to the ECB methodology) recorded a month-on-month increase by SKK 22.1 billion, while their year-on-year growth slowed by 0.6 percentage points to 13.6%.

6. The average lending rate on new loans to non-financial corporations decreased by 0.05 percentage point to 5.75% in October, and that on new loans to households went down by 0.17 percentage point to 12.28%. The average deposit rate on new deposits of non-financial corporations decreased by 0.01 of a percentage point to 2.18% in the same period, and that on new deposits of households went up by 0.14 of a percentage point to 1.38%.

7. The central government budget surplus was SKK 9.6 billion as at the end of November.

8. Foreign exchange reserves of the NBS (at the current exchange rate) reached the amount of USD 17.1 billion in November. Their amount at the end of the month represented the equivalent of 2.5 times the average monthly imports of goods and services to Slovakia for the first ten months in 2008. The coverage of the average monthly imports of goods and services (payments for imports of goods and services acquired from banking statistics data) by the official foreign exchange reserves represented the equivalent of 3.3 times the average monthly imports of goods and services to Slovakia for the first ten months in 2008.

9. In November, Národná banka Slovenska did not make any foreign exchange intervention.

10. According to the preliminary data, the balance of payments current account for October 2008 ended in a deficit of SKK 2.0 billion and the balance of payments current account for January to October ended in a deficit of SKK 94.9 billion and the trade balance deficit was SKK 3.1 billion.

11. The total sterilization position of the NBS in November, in comparison with October, increased nearly by SKK 4.0 billionto SKK 386.7 billion.

Jana Kovacova
Spokesperson of the NBS

National Bank of Slovakia
Communications Section
Imricha Karvasa 1, 813 25 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Tel.: +421-2-5787 2161,+421-2-5865 2161, +421-2-5787 2166, 421-2-5865 2166
Internet: http://www.nbs.sk

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