Dollar breaks 55 ruble mark

The dollar exchange rate declined on the Moscow Stock Exchange today and was worth 55.76 rubles, as of 10:10.

The dollar exchange rate was lower than 56 rubles for the first time since the end of 2017, RIA Novosti reported.

Yesterday, the current average rate of the dollar was 56.3888 rubles.

The director of the IBDA program, doctor of economic sciences, Professor Mikhail Portnoy, speaking with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, expressed confidence that the country's Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank will start taking steps to return the dollar to the previous levels in the country. "For such cases, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance have a strategy: the department will buy dollars to lower the ruble's exchange rate. Similarly, it is the time for the Central Bank to buy reserves in accordance with the right to issue the national currency and acquire reserves for these rubles," he said.

The economist also explained why the finance ministry will try to slow down the growing ruble rate. "The growth of the ruble constrains our exports and contributes to imports. Importers get the opportunity to buy goods for relatively little money and sell profitably in the Russian market, which means  for our producers a strong increase in competition with foreign goods. Therefore, Russia does not need the high ruble exchange rate now," Mikhail Portnoy drew attention.

The Associate Professor of the department of corporate finance, investment planning and evaluation of M.A. Limitovsky at RANEPA, Alexander Arshavsky, noted that the decline in the dollar rate against the ruble occurred after its decline against the world's largest currencies. "There are different interpretations of why this is happening, according to the main one, the exchanges expect a new softening of the US financial policy. In addition, there is the internal Russian factor: oil prices rose above $70 per barrel, which also pushed the dollar down," he explained.

At the same time, the economist doubted that the actions of the Russian Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance could change the situation. "In my opinion, now we are witnessing a fairly large influx of dollars to Russia, and not from Western investors, which strongly pushes the dollar down,"  Alexander Arshavsky said, adding that the budget does not have to worry: the decline in the dollar is compensated by the growth of dollar oil income.

According to him, we should monitor the euro rates more closely now. "We have the main trade turnover with the countries of Europe. If the calculations are conducted in euros, the growth of this currency means a rise in the cost of imported technologies. Calculations are conducted in dollars with the Asian countries, but they export mainly consumer goods, which also pushes price of the dollar down," the Associate Professor of the department of corporate finance, investment planning and evaluation of M.A. Limitovsky at RANEPA said.