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Banks Pay for Future Dollar
The interbank MosPrime Rate stepped up to 22.67 percent yesterday, having set a new record since the start of its calculation in early 2007. The rate surged on difficulties with ruble liquidity. The biggest banks continue to accumulate foreign exchange, which they don’t intend to sell apprehending further depreciation of Russia’s ruble.
The National Foreign Exchange Association fixes the MosPrime Rate based on the data of eight commercial banks, including Sberbank, Raiffeisenbank, VTB, Gazprombank, Citibank and Unicredit.
Yesterday, that rate surged to the record height on the shortage of ruble resources; the balances of correspondent accounts with commercial banks narrowed to 500 billion ruble. At the same time, the better part of 198 billion ruble traded on the CBR repo auction went to pay off the previous repo loan of 188 billion ruble. Secondly, the budget payments (excise duties, advance payments of the Unified Social Tax and insurance payments) were to be effected yesterday, and their amount varied from 150 billion ruble to 200 billion ruble, according to Renaissance Capital.
Given that the Central Bank of Russia limited its foreign exchange swap to 20 billion ruble November 12, the banks were able to cover just a portion of ruble shortage by selling the dollars.
The transactions with today and tomorrow supplies amounted to $5.8 billion yesterday, although their size exceeded $8 billion past week.
Nowadays, the banks aren’t particularly eager to dispose of dollars, judging by the exchange rate movement. The rate sank 27.5274 ruble/$ to 27.185 ruble/$ by past afternoon, but the following termination of foreign exchange sales fueled it to 27.43 ruble/$ by close of the trading. The rate of bi-currency basket moved from 30.7 ruble to 30.58 ruble but only to adjust to 30.7 ruble in the end.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 18, 2008
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