Translated material
Exporter's joy
The rate for selling foreign currency earnings has been reduced by a third
Exporters are rejoicing, the Central Bank is indignant: before leaving for the holidays, the Duma reduced the standard for the mandatory sale of foreign currency earnings from 75% to 50%. The liberalization of currency relations, for which President Vladimir Putin has been personally campaigning since the beginning of this year, was, however, not unanimously supported by deputies, giving only 240 votes for the law. But the corresponding amendments to the law on currency regulation were adopted immediately as a whole, and the Central Bank is unlikely to be able to change anything.The discussion was very scandalous and was accompanied by a public search for customers and opponents of the project, excursions into the crisis year of 1998 and apocalyptic predictions. The processing of parliamentary heads began even before the debate. Each Duma member received a certificate from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, from which it follows that to satisfy the needs of the monetary authorities, it is sufficient for exporters to sell only 30% of foreign currency earnings. Proclamations from pundits competed with the dry government tablet. The head of the Institute of National Economic Forecasting, Vladimir Ivanter, warned the Duma that it was “initiating systematic preparation for the next economic and social crisis and provoking anti-presidential sentiment.” Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems Mikhail Delyagin predicted that the people's representatives "will have to bear responsibility for a new destructive devaluation, new chaos in the country, tears and poverty of voters."
The deputy chairman of the budget committee, Mikhail Zadornov (Yabloko), who presented the bill, was businesslike and non-lyrical. According to him, the situation has changed radically compared to 1998, when a decision was made to increase the sales rate from 50 to 75%: gold and foreign exchange reserves amount to $35 billion, having increased by 7 billion since the beginning of the year, the balance of payments is positive, the ruble is actually strengthening against the dollar. And the increased rate leads to additional inflation, undermining the competitiveness of exporters and additional costs for enterprises.
In response, the head of the Economic Policy Committee, Sergei Glazyev (KPRF), said that the Duma was being offered to restore elements of the economic mechanism that led to the collapse in August 1998. Due to a decrease in the rate of sales of proceeds, the Central Bank's reserves by the end of the year could be reduced to 20 billion, the ruble exchange rate could fall to 43 rubles, and inflation could jump to 35%. “And we are fencing this garden so that exporters can reduce the cost of purchasing foreign currency by about 100-150 million dollars a year,” Mr. Glazyev tried to reason with his colleagues.
The campaign baton was picked up by Viktor Gerashchenko. He recalled that the joint statement of the Central Bank and the government following negotiations with the IMF expressed the desire to increase foreign exchange reserves by $9 billion over the year, providing, in particular, the necessary funds to repay the state’s debt in both 2001 and 2002. “This result has not yet been achieved,” the head of the Central Bank noted and called on the Duma members not to decide the issue of reducing the rate of sale of foreign currency earnings in a “cavalry style”, but to think about it until the fall.
The speech of the head of the Central Bank at the Duma meeting (according to official representative of the government Andrei Loginov, at a meeting with the president, Mr. Gerashchenko supported the law) served as a signal for the offensive of the left. They demanded that the bill be postponed, citing the authority of Mr. Gerashchenko and peppering their speeches with compliments addressed to him - “the greatest specialist,” “the financial conscience of Russia,” “the best banker in the world.” First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska (Unity) ironically reminded deputies that no one is saying goodbye to Mr. Gerashchenko yet, and he continues to work.
However, the position of the head of the Central Bank outraged some legislators. A group of deputies led by the chairman of the budget committee, Alexander Zhukov (Rosregions), prepared an appeal to the president with a request to analyze the reasons for the disagreements between the government and the Central Bank on issues of monetary and foreign exchange policy. And Deputy Chairman of the Security Committee Alexander Kulikov (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) proposed to look into the law itself, behind which “there are very serious influential corrupt forces... a group of people called oligarchs.” Deputy Chairman of the Budget Committee Vladislav Reznik (Unity) made a counter attack, noting that those who are interested in not adopting the law are those who want enterprises to spend additional money on commissions, that is, “one exchange that will lose about $10 million.” An indignant Sergei Glazyev said that the law was “lobbied by tycoons from the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs - Friedman, Bendukidze, Khodorkovsky and Potanin,” and to think that “the MICEX bought the Russian Academy of Sciences is stupidity.”
Communist Ivan Zakharov proposed continuing the session of terrible revelations in the Duma Commission on Corruption, entrusting it with a criminological examination of the law. But this instruction was not voted on. And its opponents and supporters will be able to argue about the consequences of the adoption of the law in a year, when the government and the Central Bank, according to the Duma resolution, will have to report on the results of applying the 50% norm for the sale of foreign currency earnings.