Newly appointed Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia (NBRM) Dimitar Bogov Monday took solemn oath before the Parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski thus starting his 7-year term.

Bogov, who replaces former Governor Petar Gosev, announced to urge for maintaining price stability, low inflation and stable exchange rate of the Denar.

- I have obliged to work in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia and Law on National Bank and this means that I will work on accomplishment both on price and financial stability and afterwards when these goal are to be accomplished then I will work on economic policies, Bogov said.

Bogov said that maintaining price stability means low inflation, which economic subjects will not include in their expectations at amount of 2% to 3%. The strategy will remain as before which means that we will accomplish the price stability by maintaining stable exchange rate of Denar.

On journalist question whether it is possible the reduction of compulsory reserve, which was sought by the bankers in the past period, Bogov said that they will react with instruments of monetary policy when conditions will be created.

Compulsory reserve of foreign currency for the banks was increased during the economic crisis from 10% to 13%. This reserve is one of the fundamental instruments of the monetary policy, Bogov said. - When we will assess that there is a need to react, we will do that adequately, but at this point the risk factor is the inflation, which is slightly higher of what we wish. But we know it is of temporary character and very soon it will be stabilised and will start to decrease, Bogov said.

At this moment there are no arguments to withdraw from stability of the foreign exchange rate. Economic and monetary policy, he said is in competence of the Macedonian authority and the state has no arrangement with IMF at the moment which means fulfilling demands of IMF in this direction. Our analyses show that there is no worsening of competitiveness in the past 15 years. On the contrary real effective exchange rate, which reflects improvement or worsening of the competitiveness in this period, is not much changed. On the opposite it is improved i.e. we have real exchange rate depreciation, which means improvement and not worsening of the competitiveness, Bogov said.