BOI chief Stanley Fischer
צילום: גיל יוחנן
Israel cenbank buys up to $500M of FX, shekel dips
Bank Leumi dealer says BOI 'wants to make a point it won’t let shekel strengthen too much'
The Bank of Israel so far on Wednesday has bought as much as $500 million of foreign currency in the open market to curb the shekel's appreciation, dealers said.
Dealers at large Israeli banks said the central bank bought between $300 million and $500 million as the dollar stayed below 3.69 shekels while the euro neared 5 shekels.
"They want to make a point that they won't let the shekel strengthen too much and below 3.70 to the dollar and 5 euros are too low for them," said a dealer at Bank Leumi.
Dealers estimated that the Bank of Israel bought some $1.5 billion shekels so far in April.
The shekel weakened to 3.705 per dollar and 5.05 per euro by 0827 GMT.
