THE NATIONAL bank of Slovakia (NBS) decided to cut key interest rates as of March 1 in an effort to fight the strong crown.
Based on the NBS decision, two-week repo tenders were cut by 1 percent to 3 percent; overnight refinancing operations by 1.5 percent to 4 percent; and overnight sterilization operations by 0.5 percent to 2 percent, the TASR news agency reported.
The sharp firming of the Slovak crown would threaten Slovakia's target inflation as well as disturb the country's current economic stability, said the NBS governor, Ivan Šramko.
The governor says that the NBS is ready to use available tools to reverse any undesirable developments in the currency-rate sphere.
The central bank has been fighting the crown's firming on the market for four weeks and has directly intervened several times.
