OSLO: Norway's central bank will sell foreign exchange equivalent of 700 million Norwegian crowns ($91.60 million) per day in March after selling the same amount of currency per day in February, it said in a statement on Friday.
The bank is selling the currency because the government's transfers to its $880 billion sovereign wealth fund have been smaller than earlier expected and the budget is spending more of its oil related income.
The bank usually puts foreign currency to be given to the fund into a "buffer portfolio", which had become bigger than necessary and has said it would gradually reduce the size of this buffer this year by selling foreign exchange in the market.
"Norges Bank aims for the petroleum buffer portfolio to be between NOK 5 billion and NOK 10 billion at the end of each year," the bank said in a statement on its web page.
The bank made its first purchase of crowns in October to cover the government's non-oil-related budget deficit.
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