The dollar was put into circulation – Kommersant

The US dollar once again became the most traded currency on the Russian market, exceeding the exchange trading volumes of the Chinese currency. The share of the dollar in the total turnover of the spot market again exceeded 40%. This is facilitated by the purchase of foreign currency by foreign companies that have received permission from the Russian government to withdraw from Russian projects. But as they come out, the demand for the dollar will decrease and the yuan will once again regain its dominant position in the market, analysts say.

For the third time in a week, US dollar trading volume exceeds Chinese currency trading volume. As a result of trading on Thursday, April 27, the volume of transactions in US currency with delivery “tomorrow” on the Moscow Exchange amounted to almost 91 billion rubles. This is comparable to the indicator of the environment and by 3 billion rubles. higher than the result for the Chinese currency. Earlier, in March, the yuan’s trading volumes were almost always outpaced by the dollar.

The high activity of trading in the dollar may be associated with the exit of foreign companies from Russian businesses. “In the current situation, waves of foreign business leaving the Russian Federation periodically arise, which generates additional demand for the currencies of developed countries. Accordingly, another wave occurred in April,” notes Andrey Kochetkov, a leading analyst at Otkritie Investments. In early April, it became known that Shell will sell its share in the Sakhalin-2 project (27.5%) to NOVATEK for about 95 billion rubles, which it can withdraw from Russia. In addition, the Government Commission on Foreign Investments of the Russian Federation approved a deal to sell the Russian assets of the Spanish group Inditex, as well as deal Yandex with Uber.

When agreeing on such transactions, intraday currency sale limits are set. In particular, as he wrote Interfaxin the case of the Yandex deal with Uber, the government commission limited daily currency purchases to $150 million.

Since the conversion of ruble funds occurs fairly evenly, therefore, as Andrey Kochetkov notes, there is no sharp increase in the volume of trading with the dollar on the market.

The current trading volumes in the US currency are one and a half times lower than at the beginning of the month, when it became known that the deal on Shell’s withdrawal from Sakhalin-2 was agreed upon. At the same time, the volume of average daily transactions with the dollar increased sharply. If in March the figure was below 4 million rubles, then in recent days it has confidently exceeded 5 million rubles.

At the same time, market participants note a decrease in demand for yuan. Marina Nikishova, chief economist at Zenit Bank, notes that the yuan has weakened by about 0.5% against the dollar this week. After the lifting of the tough three-year anti-COVID restrictions, investors still fear that the Chinese economy will not recover quickly. This was facilitated by ambiguous macro statistics. The profit of industrial enterprises in China in the first quarter of 2023 showed a decrease of 21.4% compared to last year. “This put some pressure on the Chinese currency on global markets and gave its projection to the Russian market,” Marina Nikishova notes.

At the same time, according to Zenit Bank, the decline in the volume of yuan trading on the Russian market in recent days is temporary and is not a global trend. This will be facilitated both by the global trend towards the de-dollarization of the Russian economy and the temporary nature of the outflow of dollar capital. “Most companies that wanted or were forced to leave Russia have already done so. Others are more focused on working in the new currency conditions using national currencies, including the ruble and yuan,” Andrey Kochetkov notes.

Vitaly Gaidaev