Azerbaijan sterilises funds worth $2 billion since 2022 - top banker

Azerbaijani Central Bank (ACB) Chairman Taleh Kazimov has said that ACB has sterilised funds worth $2 billion since early 2022.

“Azerbaijan, like many other countries, has faced high inflation shocks since mid-2021. It is important to note that the nature of inflation pressure was completely different this time. From the outset of my tenure as the CBA chairman in early 2022, combating double-digit annual inflation has been a key part of my policy agenda. Our first step was to assess the efficiency of monetary policy. We then undertook key reforms to improve ties between relevant monetary transmission channels,” Report informs, citing Kazimov’s interview with Global Finance.

“Our actions were aimed at creating the necessary infrastructure of the interbank money market and encouraging banks to actively participate in operations on the interbank monetary market. We have increased the number and frequency of open market operations and introduced some tools, various monetary market indices for benchmarking purposes. We also began to tighten our monetary policy. The required reserve standards were increased and differentiated according to the size of banks' liabilities. We regularly held auctions of notes with different maturities, which also contributed to the formation of the yield curve of the national currency,” Kazimov added.