At 10:20 a.m. Moscow time, the central bank reported about its launching in the exchange policy from February 1 a bi-currency basket with the following division: the euro's share is 10 percent and the dollar's share is 90 percent. The market reacted by lower quotations and the level of transactions slid down to 27.97 ruble per $1 by 10:40 a.m. Moscow Time.
The content of the bi-currency basket was somewhat surprising, said Mikhail Selivanov, operations management chief of Promsvyazbank monetary and commodity markets.
There are certain estimates that the central bank's European currency reserves are far bigger, which suggests the best ratio of the euro's 25 percent and the dollar's 75 percent. Therefore Selivanov thought it was not unlikely that the dollar had fallen by three-four kopecks precisely due to the specific ratio of the bi-currency basket. But the central bank promised that it would gradually increase the euro's share along with the market's adapting to new conditions. "Therefore the market is yet at a loss how to behave," said Selivanov.
Besides, the European currency's further exchange rate will depend on this Friday's publication of the next portion of US macroeconomic statistics and G7 session results where Chinese and Japanese spokesmen are to make their statements on the further exchange policy of their countries, said Selivanov.
He made a reminder of 'the main guideline to the Russian currency market given last Wednesday by Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin: the inflation can be overcome by the consolidated ruble.
The US dollar's exchange rate at the MICEX for establishing the official "tomorrow" rate amounted to 27.9833 rubles per dollar, decreasing by 2.71kopecks in comparison with last Thursday. By that time, the number of "tomorrow" transactions concluded at the Unified Trading Session made 225 to the worth of $371.33 million.
