Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) currency auction on January 9 registered $160,499,164 in sales, a -5.48% volume decline from the US $169,796,500 sold by Iraqi Dinar, credit and transfer at the previous auction held on January 8. The latest auction was attended by 45 banks and 9 remittance companies. The same institutions attended the auction held on January 9 compared to the previous auction. Data for the January 9 auction was made public by CBI Announcement Number 3609. Dollar sales in the in the period January 1, 2018 to January 9, 2018 saw an increase of -1% compared to the sales of US $0.8 billion in the same period in 2017. The total amount of US currency sold by CBI in the calendar year 2017 was US $15.7 billion. An analysis of the monthly dollar sales by CBI since January 2016 reveals highly fluctuating volumes. During the period from January 2016 to January 2018, sales of US dollars averaged US $1.75 billion per month. Peak volumes were reached in May this year when sales touched US $2.3 billion.