Today during trades on the Moscow Stock Exchange the dollar passed psychological barrier of 60 rubles per $1. For some time the US currency drifted around 59,9-60,05 rubles per $1, but then went up, gaining almost 1 ruble since trades began. Right now the dollar is traded at 60.41 rubles per $1.
Professor of the RANEPA faculty of Finance, Money Circulation and Credit, Yuri Yudenkov, recalled in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza that that yesterday, the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance announced plans to increase foreign reserves from $385 billion to $500 billion.
"In order to resolve this strategic task and raise reserves to $115 billion, the Central Bank have to buy dollars from the market, or from the stock exchange in this case. Since it was announced in advance and pointed out that the purchase will be carried out while the price of oil barrel is higher than the one projected in the budget ($40 per barrel) speculators took advantage of it. In the near future the Central Bank will buy dollars for the Ministry of Finance, and the US currency will continue to grow," he stressed.
Advisor on macroeconomics to the CEO of the 'Opening-Broker' brokerage house, economist Sergey Hestanov, believes that the likelihood of dollar exchange rate rising even more is quite high. At the same time, he emphasized that the strengthening of the ruble, which was observed in recent months, is somewhat overrated compared to oil prices in international markets.
"In other words, the ruble looks quite overrated for a long time. Excessively strong ruble is not favorable for the Russian budget, and not favorable for Russian exporters. Accordingly, in these conditions, strengthening of the ruble has naturally led to the fact that the Central Bank began to buy foreign currencies to replenish reserves, which is why the ruble has dropped," the expert explained.
According to him, considering the fact that over 60% of federal budget revenues are earnings from exports, if we consider both direct and indirect revenues, in these conditions strong ruble is simply bad for the Russian economy. "So this process is quite natural," the expert concluded.
