Russia’s Ministry of Finance nearly tripled its yuan sales under the budget rule for the period from February 7 to March 6. reported Online departments.
Bank of Russia continued From January 13, foreign currency sales from the National Wealth Fund in the domestic market, and now they only sell yuan (before that, trading was not conducted for ten months). Transactions take place on the Moscow Stock Exchange.
In order not to seriously affect the course, it was decided to sell the yuan in portions (3.2 billion rubles) each trading day. The Ministry of Finance stated that funds will go to the budget to make up for lost revenues due to the sanctions.
The amount of loss in oil and gas revenues of the federal budget in January is estimated at 54.5 billion rubles.
The volume of funds allocated at the moment for the sale of foreign currency will be 160.2 billion rubles (an additional 52.1 billion rubles for January, and a projected 108 billion rubles for January, due to the imposition of export duties on gas on a smaller volume) Loss in oil and gas revenues for February ).
In the statement made by the Ministry of Finance, “The transactions will be carried out from February 7, 2023 to March 6, 2023, respectively, the daily volume of foreign exchange sales will be 8.9 billion rubles.”
In January, the budget received only 425.5 billion rubles of oil and gas revenue, which is less than in January 2021 and January 2022. The current year’s budget includes the cost of Russian Ural oil at $70 per barrel. The deficit in budget revenues if the real price is twice as low can reach 250 billion rubles per month. The official average price of the Urals in January was $ 49.5 per barrel.
Impact on courses
Evgeny Egorov, President of the Association of Financial Market Experts “ACI Russia”, is confident that the increase in sales of the yuan will not have a significant impact on the ruble exchange rate. “The impact is limited due to the small volume of transactions related to the entire foreign exchange market, both foreign exchange and over-the-counter. The transaction volume, which can significantly affect the exchange rate, is 3 times higher than my opinion,” he said. red blood cell.
Natalia Orlova, chief economist of Alfa-Bank, believes that transactions of $ 6 billion can affect the rate, this is already a significant volume for the market. Sergei Konygin, chief economist of the Sinara investment bank, agrees with him. In his opinion, such operations can stop the decline of the Russian currency, but not strengthen it. “Now the ruble is more affected by increased capital movement: dividend payments, sale of OFZ by non-residents, population withdrawal of funds,” he notes.
Ksenia Yudaeva, the first vice-president of the Central Bank, points out that the effect of foreign exchange transactions on the yuan rate is also unclear. “Is it possible that the exchange rate of the yuan against the dollar, which is calculated over the cross rate from the Russian stock market, is different from the world rate? Or the exchange rate of the yuan against the euro? That’s the question” speaks He emphasizes that in practice this does not happen in practice. “There are times when the courses are slightly different, but the differences are usually insignificant,” says Yudaeva.
On February 3, the yuan pulled back from a three-week high against the US dollar and fell as the US currency strengthened. In the continental market, the dollar/yuan was opened at 6.74. On February 2, the People’s Bank of China set the median rate as 6,738 versus 6,713.