“The buying rate is lower, and the selling is conducted at higher numbers. [But] this fluctuation is not significant and it has seasonal character.
“In all likelihood, the dram will depreciate in the second half of February of this year and in March, too. This is primarily due to the fact that the foreign private remittances [to Armenia] sharply fall in the first months of the year, since the bulk of the [Armenian] migrant workers still have not gone to Russia. And it is in February and in March that the migrant labor season begins. It is therefore logical that those leaving change their drams before leaving.
“Nonetheless, there are factors that give reason to assume that the dram may depreciate more than gaining value this year. The maintenance of, or the drop in, the oil prices, [and] the subsequent inevitable deterioration of the Russian economy reduce the quantity of the dollars being transferred to Armenia; that is, our compatriots find it hard to make a lot of money in Russia against the backdrop of the slowdown in the economic growth of that country,” Zhamanak writes.
