Czech central bank's foreign assets grow by EUR 3.7bn in Feb 21-28

PRAGUE: The Czech central bank's receivables from abroad grew by 99.4 billion crowns, or 3.68 billion euros, between Feb. 21-28, balance sheet data showed on Monday.

The result suggests the pace of crown interventions picked up as the balance sheet figure more than doubled from what the bank reported in the previous 10-day period.

The bank's foreign assets growth has served as a rough guide to the bank's purchases of foreign currency on the market to keep the crown on the weak side of 27 per euro. The data can be affected by other transactions such as inflow of EU subsidies.

Speculative flows have pushed the central bank to increase its market activity in recent months as it nears an exit from an intervention regime in place since 2013.

The bank's board has said it will keep the policy in place until at least the second quarter and that a likely exit will be around the middle of 2017.

Official intervention data for February will be released on April 7. The central bank has spent more than 40 billion euros since the launch of the regime.