Moscow: Russia’s Central Bank has spent around $6bn from its international reserves in the past ten days to prop up the national currency, Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina said yesterday.
“We are currently supporting the exchange rate and selling funds from our reserves and have sold about $6bn in the past ten days,” Nabiullina said in the State Duma Lower House of Russia’s Parliament, according to a TASS news agency report yesterday.
The Central Bank chief said, however, that fixing an exchange rate would be a counter-productive measure, which would contradict market factors and in this case “we won’t be able to restrain them”, she said.
Attempts to artificially fix the ruble exchange rate are likely to cause steeper one-time falls in the national currency, which will adversely affect the economy, Nabiullina said.
According to the Central Bank’s chief, the ruble is not currently in a completely free float and its dynamics are influenced by market factors, first of all, external developments, including world oil prices.
The Central Bank does not intend to give up foreign currency interventions completely, Nabiullina said.
“We are not going to quit the foreign exchange market completely. We are changing, so to speak, the nature of our participation in the foreign currency market. We will make interventions, if there are risks to financial stability,” the Central Bank head said.
QNA
