The majority of Russians expect a depreciation of the ruble at the end of spring, during which the value of the dollar will reach 84 rubles, the survey conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center in late February reports.
At the same time, after a year they predict the rate to be 83 rubles a dollar.
The survey also showed a decline of Russians' interest in fluctuations in the foreign exchange market. 63% of respondents monitored it in January in comparison with 56% in February. People at the age of 25-34 years old (63%) are interested in it, especially residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg (67%).
Despite expectations of a ruble depreciation, the majority of respondents prefer to keep their savings is in the national currency. This opinion was expressed by 57% in comparison with 50% last year, and 55% in January. At the same time, 39% of respondents admitted that they had no savings.
1,600 people from 130 settlements participated in the survey, RBC reports.
It is noted that at the time of the survey the dollar was around 77 rubles. During the last few days, the Russian currency has been growing steadily. As of 08:47 pm MSK the dollar was 73.82 rubles in the Moscow stock exchange, losing about 1.38 rubles during a day.
In an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza Associate Professor of stock markets and financial engineering at RANHiGS, Vasily Yakimkin, expressed the opinion that the Russians have no serious arguments to predict changes, so their expectations are primarily concerned with their notoriously pessimistic attitude towards the rate of the national currency.
"At the moment, it is impossible to predict the exchange rate even for the next several months. The issue should be studied thorough study of and the process should be designed. For example, Saudi Arabia has declared its readiness to participate in the war with Syria and overtook several aircraft on the Turkish-Syrian border. After that, prices increased immediately. The Americans published statistics about the reduction of the total number of drilling rigs. As a consequence, oil wins back again,'' the expert said.
The researcher at the Center for the study of structural studies of the Institute of Applied Economic Research at RANHiGS, Mikhail Khromov, said that such expectations of Russians are based on the exchange rate history of the last year and a half.
"The population believes that the dollar is a savings backup tool, which is much better than the national currency,'' he said.
The expert drew attention to the fact that everything can happen in a period of three months and in the longer term. Because the current volatility is extremely high.
"In February 2015, the dollar was about 70 rubles, and in May about 50 rubles. In other words, it largely depends on oil, foreign economic and foreign policy situation, sanctions and relations with the West also play role. The majority of respondents simply remember that over the past 25 years the ruble depreciated by 80,000 times against the dollar," the analyst said.
