The shekel is strengthening against the dollar and against the euro today. In afternoon inter-bank trading, the shekel-dollar exchange rate was down 0.15% from Friday's representative rate at NIS 3.569/$ and down 0.35% against the euro at NIS 3.993/€ - a new three year low for the shekel-dollar rate and below the key NIS 4/€ rate.
On Friday, the Bank of Israel set the shekel-dollar representative rate down 0.056% at NIS 3.574/$, and the representative shekel-euro rate was set down 0.085% at NIS 4.007/€.
The Bank of Israel is expected to announce this afternoon that it is keeping the interest rate unchanged at its historic low of 0.1% for the 26th consecutive month.
The shekel continues to strengthen despite disappointing first quarter growth figures of 1.4%, well below the analysts consensus forecast of 3.7%.
In recent months, the Bank of Israel has intervened in foreign currency trading to weaken the shekel in order to assist exporters. On every occasion that the rate has slipped below NIS 3.60/$, the Bank of Israel has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign currency to push the exchange rate higher. However, the shekel has now been below the benchmark NIS 3.60/$ level for the past week, and only shows signs of falling further, yet the Bank of Israel remains sitting passively on the sidelines.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 29, 2017
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