The central bank of the Moldovan separatist republic of Transnistria has no foreign currency reserves, mold-street.com reported on April 16 quoting central bank governor Eduard Cosovski.

Transnistria’s central bank strives to maintain a fixed exchange rate regime of 11.3 Transnistrian rubles to the US dollar. However, exports have declined significantly, by 27% y/y over the past three months, according to state news agency Novosti Pridnestrovya.

A contract signed by Transnistrian power group Cuciurgan on the delivery of electricity to  Moldova only delayed the complete depletion of the forex reserves, Cosovski explained.

Transnistria’s central bank had forex reserves of $19.8mn at the end of last year. Moldova paid $40mn in advance for the electricity purchased from Cuciurgan, but the power unit and telecoms company Interdniestrcom purchased back $16mn from the market. Thus, the central bank was left with $43.8mn in its vaults. Of this total, $31.6mn were sold in daily auctions and $12mn were used on the foreign currency market in January-February.

The Transnistria government issued a decree on March 28 stating that exporters have to sell 7% of their foreign currency revenues to the central bank, novistipmr.com reported.

“There was a deficit seen in the Transnistria’s foreign exchange market at the beginning of March, 2016”, Novosti Pridnestrovya reported at the end of March.