The National Bank of Georgia on Tuesday sold $60 million at the foreign exchange auction to mitigate a “potential negative impact” on market expectations resulting from “large one-time transactions”.

The bank said the transactions, particularly those made by the financial sector in repayment of lari-denominated liabilities issued in previous years or payment of dividends, had temporarily increased demand for foreign currency in the foreign exchange market.

It added it had provided foreign currency to the market to prevent these transactions from causing excessive exchange rate fluctuations.

The average weighted rate of the operation was 2.8635. In today's currency rates, $1 costs GEL 2.8490, while €1 costs GEL 3.0584.