Closing of Money Exchange stores

Belgrade, Jan.25, 2010 (Serbia Today) - The National Bank of Serbia(NBS) announced on January 21, that by April 1st all the money exchange stores should be closed. Those operations and transactions will be fully transferred to commercial banks.
In mid-2006, when started running process of gradual withdrawal from the exchange operations, the participation of central banks in these operations was 80%, and banks involvement was 20%.
For the past three years the NBS has successively passed several measures that were aimed at banks and authorized dealers. Thanks to that, the reduced participation of the NBS in the performance of exchange operations resulted without negative effects on the Exchange and the total foreign exchange market, where Exchange operations still recorded a growing trend.
In January last year, the participation of the NBS in Exchange business was 19.3%. This percentage was reduced to 1.57% in October of the same year.
The National Bank of Serbia has enabled the conditions to discontinue the work of the authorized exchange offices, as a planned program of monetary policy for 2010. Date of termination is precisely April 1, 2010.