Croatian National Bank releases HRK 650m through regular operation

ZAGREB, May 4 (Hina) – The Croatian National Bank (HNB) on Monday released HRK 650 million through a regular open-market operation for a term of one week and at an interest rate of 0.05%.

Through regular operations, the central bank offers additional liquidity to banks for a period of one week, and today’s amount was HRK 520 million less than last week.

Notably, last week the HNB placed HRK 1.17 billion for banks at an interest rate of 0.05% and with a maturity date of May 6.

At today’s regular weekly auction, banks submitted requests for a total of HRK 650 million and the HNB accepted them all. The settlement date is May 6 while the due date is May 13.

Increasing the liquidity of the banking system is part of the measures that the HNB is undertaking with the aim of maintaining exchange rate stability during the crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic, the central bank said in a brief press release.

As of March 16 the HNB again started to conduct regular weekly operations with amounts ranging from HRK 350 million to the highest amount of HRK 1.52 billion, released in early April. The annual interest rate for the mid-March operation was 0.30%, while two weeks later, on March 23, the interest rate for short-term placements fell to 0.05% and has remained at that level since.

(€1 = HRK 7.439456)