The Russian rouble was down slightly against the US dollar in early Moscow trading on Monday, largely preserving last week’s gains driven by finance ministry interventions and large exporters converting their foreign currency earnings.
At 0750 GMT the rouble was 0.54% weaker against the dollar at 68.81. Against the euro, the rouble was down 0.4% at 74.34.
The Russian finance ministry resumed foreign currency interventions for the first time in almost a year last Friday with plans to sell 54.5 billion roubles ($793 million) of yuan from its international reserves over the next few weeks, helping the rouble to arrest a recent slide against the dollar.
Rouble firms around 67 vs dollar as tax payments draw near
The rouble was trading down 0.2% against the Chinese yuan at 10.13 in Moscow.
A note from Otkrytie Research analyst Andrei Kochetkov on Tuesday said that the rouble is likely to remain stable until the end of the month. Kochetkov said that a shortened period for converting exporters’ revenue to the rouble would offset the potential decline in oil revenue from the price cap imposed by Western countries.
Brent crude oil, a benchmark for Russia’s main export, was up 0.07% at $84.52 a barrel.
Russian stock indexes were down slightly at the start of trading.
The dollar-denominated RTS index fell by 1.07% to 1,013.49 points while the rouble-based MOEX Russian index was 0.6% down at 2,212.6 points.
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