Impacts of Foreign Exchange Auctions on the Informal Market Rate in Myanmar

Since the abolition of the official peg and the introduction of a managed float in April 2012, the Central Bank of Myanmar has operated the daily auctions of foreign exchange aimed at smoothing exchange rate fluctuations. Despite the reforms, however, informal trading of foreign exchange remains pervasive. Using the daily informal exchange rate and Central Bank auction data, this study examines the impacts of auctions on the informal rate. Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models indicate that the auctions did not reduce the conditional variance of the informal rate returns. Overall, the auctions have only a quite modest impact on the informal exchange rate.