Situation Report on the Monetary Development of Slovakia in April 2008
1. Consumer prices, measured by the harmonized index of consumer prices (HICP), increased by 0.3% in April, as compared with the previous month. The year-on-year growth rate of headline inflation was 3.7%. The core inflation year-on-year growth rate (excl. energy and unprocessed foodstuffs prices) was 3.9%.
2. Consumer prices measured by the CPI increased by 0.2% in April when compared with the previous month. The year-on-year rate of headline inflation was 4.3% and that of core inflation 4.6%.
3. Monetary aggregate M3 (in accordance with the ECB methodology) decreased by SKK 8.5 billion on a month-on-month basis in March, while its year-on-year growth rate decreased to 10.5% in comparison with the February figure.
4. 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 4.8 billion in March, while their year-on-year growth slowed by 1.9 percentage points to 16.9%.
5. The average lending rate on new loans to non-financial corporations decreased by 0.09 of a percentage point to 5.70% in March, and that on new loans to households decreased by 0.23 of a percentage point to 12.27%. The average lending rate on new deposits of non-financial corporations increased by 0.01 of a percentage point to 2.13% in the same period, and that on new deposits of households went up by 0.12 of a percentage point to 1.18%.
6. The central government budget surplus was SKK 7.7 billion as at the end of January.
7. Foreign exchange reserves of the NBS (at the current exchange rate) reached the amount of USD 19.8 billion in April. Their amount at the end of the month represented the equivalent of 3.2 times the average monthly imports of goods and services to Slovakia for the first three months in 2008. The coverage of the average monthly imports of goods and services (payments for imports of goods and services data acquired from banking statistics) by the official foreign exchange reserves represented as at the end of March the equivalent of 4.2 times the average monthly imports of goods and services to Slovakia for the first three months in 2008.
8. In January, Narodna banka Slovenska did not make any foreign exchange intervention.
9. According to the preliminary data, the balance of payments current account for January 2008 resulted in a surplus of SKK 5.1 billion and the capital and financial account of the balance of payments for the same period resulted in a surplus of SKK 15.1 billion. The balance of payments current account for January to March 2005 closed with a surplus of SKK 3.0 billion and the trade balance surplus was SKK 10.4 billion. sk.
10. The total average daily sterilization position of the NBS in April, in comparison with March, increased nearly by SKK 1 billion to SKK 372.17 billion.
Jana Kováčová
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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