WARSAW (Reuters) - The head of BRE Bank BREP.WA criticized the Polish central bank's efforts to revive the interbank market through currency swaps and open market operations, proposing an alternate plan to boost confidence among lenders.
Grendowicz said two better alternatives to avoid "the surrogacy" by the central bank would be government guarantees of interbank loans or procedures that would allow lenders to reveal some measures of the state of their financial condition.
The main reason for the falling value of the domestic currency is the crisis in Hungary, where the economy is going through very rough times, and an increased number of investors are moving away from the area, including Poland. Despite the falling value, representatives of the National Bank of Poland (NBP) declared that the institution will not intervene in the market as the whole situation is caused by speculation by foreign investors.
Polish zloty falls unjustified by fundamentals-cbank
'In the opinion of the National Bank of Poland, the sudden fall in the value of the zloty observed in recent days is temporary in character and the good shape of the economy will help it return to a level reflecting fundamental factors,' the bank said. http://www.hemscott.com/news/static/tfn/item.do?newsId=68240589888687
Polish Central Bank: Zloty's Sudden Fall Is Temporary
"The sudden plunge in the zloty exchange rate observed over the past few days is of a temporary nature, and the good condition of the Polish economy will support the exchange rate's return to a level justified by the fundamentals," the central bank's management board said after a meeting Thursday.
The statement helped arrest the zloty's free-fall against major currencies, as the currency rebounded 1% against the dollar and the euro. Since late Wednesday, the zloty had plunged 5% against the two currencies, and shed 18% against the dollar since the beginning of the week.
"Speculators decided they can't ignore the central bank's verbal intervention, when they know the next step would be actual intervention - which could be very effective in such an illiquid market," said senior economist Rafal Benecki of ING Bank Slaski.
Retail sales in the European Union's biggest ex-communist economy rose 11.6 percent from a year earlier, broadly in line with economists' expectations and even stronger than the 7.7 percent increase reported for August.
Unemployment surprised by falling to 8.9 percent, its lowest since June 1991.
'I think that Poland remains in reasonable shape and in better shape than some of its smaller neighbours, particularly the Czech Republic or Hungary, simply because it has a much larger internal market,' said David Hauner, emerging markets strategist at Bank of America in London.