In the first seven months of this year, the Moscow Stock Exchange recorded a spot trading volume in yuan totaling 18.3 trillion rubles, representing a six-and-a-halffold increase from the same period a year earlier. This trend is reported by Izvestia, citing the exchange’s press service.
The 18.3 trillion rubles translates to roughly 8.4 percent of last year’s gross domestic product, which stood at 153.4 trillion rubles. It also mirrors the scale of cash presently in circulation in Russia. As of July 1, circulating money reached about 17.8 trillion rubles. During the summer, the yuan emerged as the most actively traded currency on the Moscow Exchange, with July data showing the yuan at about 43 percent of turnover, the US dollar at 34 percent, and the euro at 12 percent according to the exchange’s reports.
Artur Bedzhanov, a senior personal broker at BCS World of Investments, attributed this shift to growing demand among Russian companies and investors for the Chinese currency. He noted that corporations are shifting cash flows toward a currency perceived as friendlier amid monetary restrictions and rising imports of Chinese goods such as cars, footwear, clothing, and home appliances.
Trade figures from the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China indicate a 40.6 percent increase in Russia–China trade during January to June versus the same period last year, amounting to $114.54 billion. Bedzhanov suggested that the demand for yuan in Russia is unlikely to ease in the near term unless relations with Western nations normalize and sanctions on Russia’s central bank reserves are eased.
Spot trading refers to the direct purchase and sale of financial assets with immediate payment. In Russia, the volume of yuan payments sent to foreign counterparties has risen sharply this year, showing an 18.5-fold increase compared with 2021, according to a source familiar with the bank Tochka’s operations.
The discussion around why the central bank placed the yuan high on its currency ranking continues to be a topic of interest among market participants.