The ruble has strengthened noticeably on the Moscow Exchange. The national currency is gaining about 2% against the Chinese yuan — it costs about 11.4 rubles. This is happening against the backdrop of the tax period. June 28 is a single tax payment day. But this is far from the only factor: problems with settlements in yuan persist, demand for currency is still low due to the introduction of sanctions against the Moscow Exchange.
All this will continue to work to strengthen the ruble and the authorities will certainly intervene in this, investment strategist of the management company “Aricapital” Sergey Suverov is sure: “One of the main reasons for the strengthening of the ruble is the consequences of the sanctions against the Moscow Exchange, as well as difficulties in settlements caused by the restrictions.
Payments for imports are made with great difficulty, yuan do not leave Russia very well due to difficulties in settlements, so an excess of yuan liquidity has formed in the financial market, this leads to the strengthening of the ruble relative to the yuan. But tax period factors also have an impact. It can also be said that residents reduced their demand for dollars and euros after the introduction of sanctions against the Moscow Exchange. It is quite problematic to buy dollars and euros, especially non-cash ones; the exchange rate is also not very transparent, and this also discourages purchases of foreign currency.
I think that the strengthening of the ruble is still temporary. Most likely, as payments normalize, imports will also recover. In addition, we understand that the authorities are not very interested in a strong ruble due to the budget situation.
Therefore, they may take some new measures to ensure that the national currency weakens a little. For example, one of the measures has already been taken, this is the easing of the standard for the mandatory sale of export foreign currency earnings from 80% to 60%. This measure will take effect with a certain lag. I think that this measure was taken, among other things, to prevent the national currency from strengthening excessively.”
In the future, the authorities may completely cancel the mandatory sale of foreign currency earnings in order to weaken the ruble. This tool has proven its effectiveness, says Igor Nikolaev, chief researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “We have already seen one tool, we tried to use it, and it still has potential – reducing the sales standard of 80% of foreign currency earnings to 60%.
I believe that the likelihood of abolishing the mandatory sale of foreign currency earnings is growing.
This is a tool that, I repeat, has shown its effectiveness, and it can definitely be used, at least it’s on the surface. As for volatility, it seems to me that simply over time and with such a clear desire to make it clear that the exchange rate will be maintained, but it should be weaker, this volatility will decrease compared to what it is now.”
As importers told Kommersant FM, to make payments to China they are forced to turn to intermediaries or work with small Chinese banks. The big ones refuse to deal with Russian business. An alternative option is cryptocurrency.
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