jUNE 2009 21
however, is the volume of term and savings deposits, which are of
longer maturity and as such are one of the main sources of loanable
funds for banks. Unfortunately, as the last row of Table 5 shows,
the share of saving deposits in banks’ total liabilities remains very
low; it was only about 15 percent in 2006.
7
Uzbekistan can easily be classified as an open economy, as indi-
cated by the high ratio of the country’s total trade to its GDP (more
than 60 percent). Such openness is accompanied by specific chal-
lenges for the monetary authorities. The reaction of the authorities
to the country’s current account position has always influenced the
CBU’s monetary policy. In response to large current account deficits,
about US$980 million in 1996 and about US$585 million in 1997,
compared with US$20 million in 1995, the authorities introduced
trade and exchange rate restrictions in the mid-1990s. As a result
of growing restrictions on trade and access to foreign exchange, a
parallel market premium over the official U.S. dollar exchange rate
reached about 500 percent by the end of 1999. After a series of large-
scale devaluations (by some 600 percent between 2000 and 2003),
the multiple exchange rates were unified and current account convert-
ibility was reintroduced in the country toward the end of 2003.
As Table 6 shows, the continuing trade surplus since 2000 has
enabled the authorities to increase the stock of international reserves
considerably. Changing fortunes since 2000, however, have put a
completely different type of pressure on the monetary authorities.
Although the growth of the stock of international reserves was wel-
come news, its impact on the money supply and hence on inflation
posed something of a new challenge.
The rising stock of international currency reserves gradually
started putting upward
pressure on the money supply, which in
turn triggered inflation. To prevent the inflationary consequences of
continuously rising trade surplus, the authorities opted to sterilize
reserve flows. Sterilization policies helped to keep inflation down
through two channels. First, by sterilizing the impact of reserve flows
on the domestic money supply, the authorities were able to
control
inflation directly. And second, sterilization policies also helped the
authorities to maintain the value of the national currency at a rela-
tively high level (the rate of depreciation of the national currency
22 PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC TRANSITION
was less than the rate of inflation). Overvaluation of the currency in
turn also helped to push the prices of imported goods and services
down, thus helping to bring the inflation rate further down.
In short, the timely and fully controlled implementation of the
policies of self-sufficiency in energy and wheat production as well
as ambitious import substitution projects, which epitomized the
old-style centralized
management of the economy, necessitated
the establishment of highly sophisticated
big banks responsible
for relending international loans as well as centralized credits to
domestic economic entities. This in turn also explains why banking
sector reforms have stalled in the country and why, notwithstanding
some of the positive developments achieved in the banking sector,
such as the complete overhaul of the payments system, control
over inflation, and introduction and encouragement of the use of
new payment mechanisms in the retail banking sector, the general
public’s trust in banks remains extremely weak.
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