NBS: Financial result caused by exchange rate and prices

BELGRADE - The National Bank of Serbia (NBS) has stated that its financial result last year was caused by differences in foreign exchange rates and prices.

This result is attributable to changes in EUR/USD exchange rate, lower yields on "safe" securities and the falling price of gold in the international market, the NBS said on Sunday in response to claims by opposition parliament members that the NBS ended 2013 with a balance loss for the first time in its history.

However these are not the actual losses suffered by the NBS - the quantity of gold in reserves held by the NBS has remained the same and only its quantification in value terms has changed, the central bank stated.

The NBS balance sheet from 31. December 2013. posted on the Serbian Business Registers Agency website, the NBS recorded a RSD 43,594,173,000 loss in 2013.

Head of the Democratic Party group in the parliament Borko Stefanovic said during the debate on the budget review the NBS had finished a year with a deficit for the first time in its history, but that Governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic's pay would still not by reduced.

"Allegations are not true that the only time the NBS has made a loss was in 2013. The results from 2006 onwards show that negative financial result of the NBS was also recorded in 2006 and in 2007. The difference lies mainly in who exactly profited from exchange rate differences and the securities trading," according to the NBS statement.

As a rule, in the years where there are losses, there is also a strengthening of the domestic currency, a fall in asset prices (gold and securities) or a rise in operating costs fuelled by the need to sterilise liquidity due to substantial capital inflows which, through buoyed...