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JERUSALEM, April 26 (Xinhua) — The ongoing depreciation of the Israeli shekel against the U.S. dollar stood at 3.818 shekels per dollar on Friday, according to the country’s central bank.
Bank data showed that the Israeli currency has the lowest value against the greenback since Nov. 14 last year, when the exchange rate was 3.833 shekels per dollar.
On March 1 this year, the dollar rate stood at 3.565 shekels, and since then, the Israeli currency has weakened by 6.6 percent compared to the U.S. currency.
Joseph Freiman, CEO of the Israeli financial Prico Group, told Xinhua that while the dollar is weakening globally, in the local arena, the fear of a security deterioration and companies being on holiday vacation led to a decrease in foreign exchange sales and excess demand.
He added that the fear of a security escalation in the Middle East caused energy prices to rise and contributed to the strengthening of the dollar against the shekel.
Yossi Frank, CEO of Energy Finance, a leading Israeli financial risk management company, pointed to another reason for the trend, of speculator activity in the foreign exchange market, taking advantage of sparse trading during the holiday and the non-intervention of the central bank.
He warned that the continuation of the current situation would cause price increases and inflation, prevent the central bank from reducing the base interest rate, and ease the Israeli economy a bit.
