Contents tagged with Central Bank of Russia
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Media: Russian banks stop issuing Visa and MasterCard in Crimea
Crimea-based Genbank (part of the Bank of Russia group) announced last week that its support of the Visa and MasterCard payment systems would end as of August 14. It was the last bank in Crimea to issue the cards of the international payment systems, the BBC Russian service notes.
As of Tuesday, August 14, all Visa and MasterCard operations will no longer work. A Genbank call center employee clarified to Reuters in a phone call that the decision was made in connection with the sanctions placed …
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Russian banks reluctunt to buy Kremlin bonds
Russian banks are in no rush to support the government debt market, which foreign investors have recently fled. The largest and systematically most significant banks and other participants in the banking system have been dumping Federal Loan Bonds (OFZs) alongside non-residents, according to a statistic published by the Central Bank of Russia on Wednesday.
Foreign investors disposed of 370 billion rubles worth of Russian government debt notes after the US placed sanctions on the aluminum …
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US Senate sends the market of Russian government bonds spiraling downward
The market for Russian government debt, which has already experienced two major sell-offs since April, is going into a recession, finanz.ru reports.
The price of Russian debt on the Moscow Exchange has fallen for two consecutive days, in light of news that the US Senate has introduced a bill which would drastically increase the sanctions against Russia. The document, which was put forward by an inter-party group, including republican John McCain and democrat Bob Mendendez, demands that the …
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Russia loses $16.3 million from National Wealth Fund
The placement of foreign currency reserves in Central Bank accounts continues to result in losses for the Russian Finance Ministry, according to the department’s operational statistics which were published on Thursday, finanz.ru reports.
On August 1, the Central Bank of Russia was managing two thirds of the National Wealth Fund (NWF), which were invested in a basket of foreign currencies – 22.11 billion US dollars, 20.75 billion euros and 4.37 billion pounds sterling.
The investment of these …
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Russians losing faith in ruble
The proportion of Russian citizens who expect the exchange rate of the Russian national currency to drop has grown by 70% since spring 2018 and reached a record since the start of the study (2013).
44% of respondents expect the ruble to weaken in the next 12 months, the results of the Central Bank of Russia’s July survey indicate.
This is 17 percentage points more than in March, and higher than the previous record from August and September 2014 (41%). Thus the Russian currency market’s April …
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Foreign investments in Russian national debt reach one-year low
The nominal quantity of non-residents’ investments in Russian Federal Loan Bonds (OFZs) as at July 1 was 1.98 trillion rubles, the Central Bank of Russia reported. The total OFZ market at the time amounted to 7.03 trillion rubles. The non-resident investor share has thus dropped to 28.2%, the lowest in nearly one and a half years. The last time this indicator was below 30% was at the end of February 2017. Looking at the nominal volume, the amount invested by non-residents in Russian national …
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Russia to adopt law on zero tax for oligarchs
The State Duma budget and taxes committee has recommended the adoption in the first reading of a bill to create offshore zones in Russia with a special tax regime for the international holding companies through which the wealthiest Russians control the economy’s key assets.It follows from the bill, as cited by TASS, that within the special administrative zones on the Oktyabrsky and Russky islands in the Kaliningrad province and Pimorsky Krai, which are designed to replace the western offshore …
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Russia forced to make record loan repayments
According to statistics published by the Central Bank of Russia on Thursday, after the April round of US sanctions, Russian banks and corporations have had difficulties with foreign debt.
In the second quarter, repayment of loans from the West took a record $34 billion out of the Russian economy. Banks which, at the start of the year, had the opportunity to partially extend loans, have this time been unable to refinance a cent: over the last quarter they paid off $9.8 billion, which is even …
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Russian foreign currency reserves in danger
The assets and currencies which the Bank of Russia holds funds in are depreciating rapidly, reports Finanz.ru. For example, gold, which the Central Bank of Russia has been actively purchasing for several years, has hit its lowest price since last year, dropping by roughly 8.5% compared to its April high.
Recently published data showed that last year the Bank of Russia began to actively accumulate reserves in Chinese yuans, tripling these investments. However, as part of its “trade war” with …
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Russia’s Central Bank predicts sanctions and stagnation
Over the next three years, the rate of economic growth in Russia will be half of the world average, and sanctions from western countries will persist, restricting the flow of foreign capital, without which it will be necessary to rely solely on internal resources.These were Russia’s Central Bank’s (CB) assumptions in the projection of the “Primary areas of development of the financial market” until 2020.
No significant acceleration of the Russian economy is foreseen. The CB predicts that the …