SEK strengthened earlier this afternoon....>

RIKSBANK: SEK strengthened earlier this afternoon in the wake of the Riksbank

announcement that it was reducing its foreign exchange reserves. EURSEK reached

a low of 10.4938 following the announcement, but has since retraced some of this

gain.

- A Riksbank official told MNI that the central bank was not going to purchase

krona in order to reduce the reserves. Instead, the reduction in reserves will

be achieved by the Swedish National Debt Office not refinancing its outstanding

foreign currency loans maturing in 2019 and not raise further loans on behalf of

the Riksbank this year.

- SEK19bn of foreign loans matured on 21 Feb 2019 and there are SEK70bn

outstanding foreign loans for 2019 which will no longer be refinanced.