YEREVAN. – Haykakan Zhamanak daily has learned that about 200 million of the 500 million US dollars, which the Republic of Armenia (RA) received from placing Eurobonds last week, will be used for filling the country’s foreign reserves. As a result, Armenia’s foreign reserves will amount to about 1 billion 450 million dollars, the daily reported.     

“[But] the problem is that the RA foreign reserves have dropped by about one billion dollars, as compared to January of last year, reaching 1 billion 260 million dollars, in February of this year, from 2 billion 250 million, and setting a negative record for the last 6 years. 

“Such a low level of foreign reserves causes serious problems for Armenia. Their amount, with internationally accepted standards, cannot be less than 25 percent of the imports to the given country. The current level of [Armenia’s] foreign reserves, however, is already extremely close to that lower limit.    

“On the other hand, the filling of the foreign reserves with the amount received from Eurobonds is a temporary solution. And taking into account the rate at which our reserves were decreasing until then, we have to expect the problem to become topical again in [several] months,” Haykakan Zhamanak wrote.