By September 1, 2008 deposits in the banking sector of the country constituted 2.7 billion GEL, which is 0.7 percent less than the figure for the same date of 2007 and 12.7 percent less than figure reached by August 1 of the current year. Compared to July, the volume of deposits denominated in the national currency decreased by 15.7 percent, while foreign currency denominated deposits decreased by 10.7 percent. Thus, while in the past two years the dollarization ratio was constantly decreasing, by the end of August this index amounted to 61.4 percent, which is 1.4 percentage points higher than the indicator for the previous month.

It is notable that August events have affected also the structure of deposits in foreign currency. In particular, if the shares of USD and EURO in the total volume of deposits in foreign currency were 69.7 and 29.6 percent respectively, by September 1 this ratio changed to 74.5 and 24.8 percent.

It should be noted that within one month the volume of deposits of individuals decreased by 17.1 percent (260.0 million GEL), while the volume of deposits of legal entities decreased by 8.5 percent (129.0 million GEL). At the same time, interest rate on deposits grew by 1.3 percentage points and amounted to 10.7 percent by the beginning of September. This was mainly due to increase of the interest rate on foreign currency denominated deposits by 1.9 percentage points, pushing the interest rate up to 9.9 percent by September 1.

Current statistical information is published on the statistics page of the NBG's website.