By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday the national currency took a sudden jump of two rubles in comparison with the dollar and the euro. In the morning $1 cost 43.66 rubles; a euro – 55.49 rubles. In the afternoon the ruble grew below the grade of 42 per dollar and 53 per euro. Dmitry Piskulov, the chairman of the National Currency Organization, explained to Vestnik Kavkaza that the strengthening of the ruble was a boomerang effect of the exchange panic.
“The ruble has been falling rapidly in recent times; this caused panic among corporations and the population, people started to buy foreign currency. However, the ruble has rebounded already. This was confirmed by technical characteristics and fundamental macroeconomic factors. Actually, the real exchange rate should be about 40 rubles to the dollar,” the expert says.
Piskulov stressed that such a deep devaluation of the ruble in recent weeks couldn’t have been caused by falling oil prices, the zero growth in the Russian economy, the capital outflow or foreign economic sanctions. “I should stress that in the situation of a free-floating exchange rate, volatility of fluctuations can be rather significant. We can see it today: the ruble has reached its nadir and began to strengthen. I remind you that the previous fall in the ruble was based on negative expectations due to the situation in Ukraine; the current strengthening is connected with a statement by Yeremenko, a Ukrainian diplomat, that Russia and Ukraine have reached an agreement on Crimea,” Piskulov thinks.
According to him, the news was a positive accelerator so that some exchange speculators would close short positions on the ruble. “However, I should remind you that tomorrow there will be a session of the Board of the Bank of Russia on monetary policy; it could bring new results about a possible increase of the official interest by the Central Bank. So I wouldn’t speak about a full-scale strengthening of the ruble. Ambiguity continues, and we could see fluctuations which are typical for currencies which are not supported by Central Banks,” Dmitry Piskulov concluded.
Anatoly Aksakov, the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee for Financial Markets, thinks that “the fundamental factors which determine the ruble’s rate say that it should cost less than 40 rubles to the $1.” Aksakov notes that today geopolitical factors are the priority. “The Federal Reserve System states about the elimination of quantitative easing; exchange inflation has already passed through it. This influenced investors. I admit that by the end of the year the ruble will strengthen to a greater extent,” Aksakov says.
