The shekel is strengthening against the dollar and weakening against the euro today. In morning inter-bank trading, the shekel-dollar exchange rate was down 0.57% from yesterday's representative rate at NIS 3.505/$, and up 0.23% against the euro at 4.151/€.
Yesterday, the Bank of Israel set the shekel-dollar representative rate down 0.113% from yesterday at NIS 3.525/$ and set the shekel-euro rate up 0.104% at 4.142/€.
On world forex markets, the dollar slumped after minutes from the most recent Fed meeting revealed concerns about low inflation and poor economic data.
For its part the shekel remains strong after Israel's far better than expected third quarter growth data, which showed GDP growing at 4.1% on an annualized basis. Furthermore, last week's Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading for October of 0.3%, slightly higher than expected, has also reinforced the belief that inflation is moving closer to the government target range of 1%-3%, encouraging speculators to believe the Bank of Israel will go ahead with planned interest rate hikes in the second half of 2018.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 23, 2017
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