The shekel fell 1.4% against sterling after UK Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election.
The shekel continues to weaken against the dollar and against the euro today. In early afternoon inter-bank trading, the shekel-dollar exchange rate was up 0.19% from yesterday's representative rate at NIS 3.672/$ and up 0.58% against the euro at 3.937/€.
Yesterday, the Bank of Israel set the shekel-dollar representative rate up 0.494% today compared with last Friday's rate at NIS 3.665/$, and the representative shekel-euro rate was set up 0.793% at NIS 3.915/€.
After falling to 30-month exchange-rate lows against the dollar and 15-year lows against the euro earlier this month, the Israeli currency has been consistently weakening in the past few weeks. The depreciation of the shekel has been helped on its way by large foreign currency purchases by the Bank of Israel, which sought to help exporters struggling to sell goods overseas due to the strength of the shekel. Yesterday, sterling strengthened 1.4% against the shekel to NIS 4.643/£, a two month high, after UK Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap general election in June, in the hope of strengthening her mandate to take Britian out of the EU.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 19, 2017
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2017
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