da blooombedrg
sarà per gennaio chissà come si svolgerà l'azione di cambio
After striking a deal with the creditor committees of its failed banks, Iceland is preparing to absorb about $2.3 billion in offshore kronur caught in limbo by its capital controls.
The government and the central bank on Wednesday agreed to allow bank creditors eager to draw their claims from Iceland to do so without paying an exit tax. The decision came after creditor groups put forward alternative payment proposals that fulfilled economic stability requirements set by the island.
“I can see the finish line,” Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said in an interview in Reykjavik. But he was quick to point out that “this isn’t the whole story.”
Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson said the first currency auction will probably take place early next year.
“We need to accept that it has moved a bit in time,” he said in an interview. “We had hoped the auction would take place in October, or no later than November, but now I think it’s likely that we can hold it in January.”
Iceland needs to conduct currency auctions to ensure that the gap between offshore and onshore kronur that developed when capital controls were introduced in 2008 is closed. Central bank Governor Mar Gudmundsson estimates there are about 300 billion kronur ($2.3 billion) left in offshore kronur.
“We’ll put a certain amount of foreign exchange on the table and say: If you want to exit, you can bid on this foreign exchange,” Gudmundsson said in an interview in Reykjavik. Offshore kronur holders will also have the option to “tie their money up for a longer period of time in Iceland, either by purchasing long Treasury bonds or through some fund, or something like that.”
Investors holding offshore kronur who don’t choose either option “will find their money in a locked bank account,” he said.
Once the auctions have been completed, Iceland will have “removed the obstacles that have prevented us from lifting capital controls on the general public,” Gudmundsson said.
Even without capital controls, there’s no reason to assume Iceland will again have a freely floating exchange rate.
“We have to make a distinction between the exchange rate policy, on the one hand, and controls or not controls and movements of capital, on the other,” Gudmundsson said. “For example, Hong Kong has completely free movement of capital, but an exchange rate that’s completely fixed. These are separate things."
Once Iceland is free of its capital controls, monetary policy will include a tool that allows the central bank to intervene “if we feel that the inflow of foreign exchange into the economy is too much and is beginning to cause problems in the execution of the monetary policy,” he said.
Iceland
Currency Market
da Bloomberg
