MAYOR: A dollar will cost 35 rubles

The dollar in 2009 will cost an average of 35.1 rubles. According to Kommersant on Tuesday, this was announced yesterday by the Minister of Economic Development Elvira Nabiullina. The dollar for the next few days remains the most profitable instrument in the financial market. Within a few days, banks have stopped playing on ruble bonds, the banking sector's investments in any other instruments have fallen significantly - risk aversion in rubles with an almost guaranteed and ultra-high ruble yield in dollars makes it pointless to invest anywhere except for foreign currency assets, the newspaper notes.

The stock market also felt this - the MICEX and RTS indices yesterday fell to 2002 levels. For a number of bonds, including ruble loans guaranteed by the Moscow Region to Mosobltrastinvest and Eurokommerz Bank, the MICEX had to stop trading due to a fall in prices by more than 10 percent. The market does not expect the Central Bank to stop its "managed devaluation", although at this pace the indicator of 35 rubles per dollar can be reached by the Bank of Russia by Friday.

On December 24, President Dmitry Medvedev, in an interview with Russian television channels, said that the exchange rate of the ruble against foreign currencies would be set more flexibly, taking into account the real economic situation, while exchange rate fluctuations "would not cause the losses that occurred as a result of the sharp devaluation of the ruble in 1998."

“As for the ruble exchange rate, it must be effective and it must correspond to the real state of our economy. That is, we must maintain it within certain limits, but at the same time, this exchange rate should be, perhaps, a little more flexible than it was recently, in order not to create domestic economic problems," Medvedev said.

According to him, the monetary policy of the authorities "will be transparent for citizens" and will not lead to losses similar to 1998. "But everything that will be done will be done openly. And of course, this should not lead to losses for the citizens of the Russian Federation. Because the line of conduct of the authorities cannot be the same as in 1998, when some decisions were accepted, and the next morning everyone woke up robbed, felt that they had lost very, very much," Medvedev said.