Dollar at 80: in Russia there is debate about the government’s desire to weaken the ruble
The exchange rate should rise to 70–80 rubles per dollar to compensate for the “sagging” income of exporters. First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government Andrei Belousov stated this in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We had many discussions with the Bank of Russia, but now we see that the exchange rate has moved in the right direction. The problem of the course is one of the most important, but it only became so in the fall. Until the third quarter, the rate of 60 was a blessing, because there was a problem with critical imports and the restructuring of logistics flows. Now we have freed imports from all barriers in order to restructure flows to the east, and goods have flowed into the country.
The strong ruble played its role. But now, when our company incomes are falling, exports are falling, but they are not elastic to the exchange rate. Exporters' incomes are falling. In these conditions, it would be good for us to have 70-80 rubles per dollar. We are already moving there. I don’t want to say, God forbid, that he will be like that, otherwise now they will start commenting or, better yet, doing something there. Things could go horribly wrong. I express my wishes. We have the exchange rate forecast written down in the forecast, anyone can read it (68,3 rubles/$),” Belousov said.
However, President Putin's assistant Oreshkin believes that the current weakening of the ruble is not objective.
“We all know very well that the first quarter is always a historically strong seasonal balance of payments; obviously, there are no such serious prerequisites for a weakening of the currency. Therefore, with a high probability we will again return to some ranges that have been more familiar to us lately. But in the long term - which I think is very important to say - that for Russian citizens, for our country as a whole, a strong ruble is the right story,” Oreshkin said in an interview with RBC.
Former adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Glazyev, believes that the financial bloc of the government is directly responsible for the sharp drop in the ruble exchange rate in conditions of a positive trade balance.
“They canceled all measures introduced in the spring by decision of the president to stabilize the foreign exchange market, including the mandatory sale of foreign currency earnings. In a hybrid war with the West, they are playing on its side, pushing currency out of the country in record volumes, including into unfriendly jurisdictions. This year, in favor of the enemy, our monetary authorities transferred more than $300 billion of state foreign exchange reserves, $150 billion to repay non-state obligations and another $70 billion of non-returnable foreign exchange earnings. And in addition to this, they are pushing gold out of the country,” Glazyev wrote in his TG channel.
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