Skopje, 4 August 2022 (MIA) – There is no budging from the stable fixed foreign exchange rate and there should be no doubt on this issue. Foreign currency reserves are the buffer that guarantee this stability and are there to eliminate emerging pressures. Over the past few months (April-July), we have seen continued easing of the pressure on the foreign currency market and foreign currency sales have turned into purchases, resulting in an increase of the foreign currency reserves in July, university professor and National Bank Council member Borche Trenovski tells MIA. Professor Trenovski says the monetary stability and predictability is crucial when creating sustainable economic policies and a sound business environment. “The foreign exchange rate is the ‘anchor’ of our economy that prevents the ‘economic ship’ being taken away by the waves caused by regional and global winds of instability. There is no doubt that the measures of the National Bank should focus on maintaining this stability,” says Trenovski. According to him, it was inevitable that the chain of economic, energy and security crises put pressure on the monetary stability and foreign currency markets. “These trends have provoked a historic response by our central bank but also by almost all counterpart institutions in the region and the world, through the adoption of series of measures involving interest rates, mandatory reserves, repo-transactions, macro-prudent measures etc,” says Trenovski. He notes the impact of unfounded speculation on the foreign currency market while adding that stability of the national currency is guaranteed by the sufficiency of the foreign currency reserves. “Amid a global instability, primarily the vast electricity imports, there has been a certain decrease in the amount of the foreign currency reserves over the past year, but they are now at one of the highest levels on record (EUR 3,197 billion). The aspect that can destabilize the market at this time is the unfounded speculation, which the central bank has been dealing with in the past period,” says Trenovski.