The dollar has risen by 9% in seven days. Economists say that this is not the limit. The official exchange rate of the Central Bank on August 14 is 92.5 rubles. The last time it reached such values was in the fall of 2023. The euro has similar dynamics. A week ago, the regulator estimated the currency at 92 rubles, now it costs more than 100 rubles. The growth was 8% in a week. The weakening of the ruble began last week, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked the Kursk region. But on August 13, the dynamics accelerated: in just one day, the dollar rose in price by almost 3 rubles, and the euro — by 4 rubles.
When will this end? Astra UA Investment Director Dmitry Polevoy says there are reasons for optimism: «If we talk about the fundamental base, July looks weaker in terms of foreign trade surplus. The current account surplus has been replaced by a deficit, but here it is largely a paper deficit, we do not see any big problems for the exchange rate in the July figures.
Moreover, if we eliminate the obvious seasonality in the export and import data, then exports remained relatively stable in July, but imports continued to fall, and quite sharply.
If we look at the value of imports in rubles, the decline intensifies. The bottom line is that there are probably no prerequisites for a sustained strong and further weakening of the ruble, but most likely we will continue to see such high volatility, high spreads, which will add many questions to participants, investors and the population. The level of uncertainty will be high.
We do not know what the real real exchange rate is right now, not only in relation to the dollar and the euro, but also in relation to the yuan. The only conclusion is that the representativeness of the official values has greatly decreased.
But perhaps this is just a new reality in which we will have to live further. Moreover, the license to curtail operations with the Moscow Exchange expires on October 12. If Chinese banks stop their operations with the platform, the foreign exchange market will finally become over-the-counter. The transparency of exchange rate formation will be much less than what we are all accustomed to.”
Market participants are paying attention to the imbalance of currency pairs. If the dollar, for example, has risen in price by 9% in a week, then the yuan has risen by only 1.5%. This is if we judge by the official data of the Central Bank, which estimated the Chinese currency at 12 rubles. Sber CIB conducted another experiment: they calculated the cross-rate of the yuan to the dollar. It turned out that in Russia the Chinese currency costs 7% more than abroad. The discrepancies are associated with sanctions on the Moscow Exchange, due to which trading in dollars and euros was stopped, and the withdrawal of yuan was complicated.
On August 13, foreign organizations were supposed to complete all transactions with the platform. The US Treasury Department, however, extended the license until October, but many participants did not wait, believes Valery Weisberg, director of the analytical department of the investment company Region: «Still, the interbank market is more transactional, that is, the demand for currency is determined by customer requests. If we talk about exchange trading, then this is a balance sheet benchmark.
It turns out that most counterparties who worked with the Moscow Exchange preferred not to wait for the second deadline to complete transactions. I cannot say whether the movement in currency pairs is in any way connected with the reduction in currency sales by exporters. At least because it happened yesterday, that is, on August 13, when the first license to complete transactions with the Moscow Exchange expired. This did not happen, for example, on August 12 or August 9, although it is clear that the obligation to sell evenly and agree on sales schedules remains. If pilot transactions with settlements in cryptocurrency really begin on September 1, the situation will be even more complicated. That is, in fact, the market will have to go through another stage of adjustment.»
Sber CIB expects exporters to increase their currency sales with the onset of the tax period. CentroCredit Bank believes that the ruble will be supported by the high key rate, which additionally restrains imports. However, this is not the only factor influencing the currency market, reminds Mikhail Vasiliev, chief economist at Sovcombank: «One of the new local factors is the geopolitical aggravation in the Kursk region, which has led to demand for currency from individual market participants.
Some players immediately flee to currency. Wealthy clients work, including through management companies. The second factor, also related to geopolitics, is another round of deterioration in the situation with payments to friendly countries due to Western sanctions. Since the situation is generally balanced from a fundamental point of view, we do not expect a significant weakening of the ruble exchange rate.
In our forecasts for this quarter, we include an average exchange rate of 12 rubles for the yuan, 88 rubles for the dollar, and 96 rubles for the euro. Although, of course, this will largely be determined by the development of the geopolitical situation, and not by fundamental factors.»
On August 14, the ruble continued to fall. At least, judging by the cross rate. On the interbank market, the American currency is trading at around 86.5 rubles, the European currency is slightly above 95 rubles.
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