Translated material
The cost of war in Ukraine. Online December 27
The Bell continues to conduct online, dedicated to the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, which began on February 24.
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20:59 Italy is considering the supply of air defense systems to Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said following a telephone conversation with Italian Prime Minister George Meloni George Meloni.
19:18 Vladimir Putin signed a decree on retaliatory measures to introduce a price ceiling for Russian oil. It follows from the text that Russia will not supply oil to countries that have joined this restriction and prescribe it in contracts. The decree comes into force from February and is valid until July 1, 2023.
18:25 Ukraine returned the bodies of another 42 dead soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Under what conditions is not specified. The Russian side has not announced the exchange.
17:44 The weakening of the ruble may be temporary and in January the rate will return to ₽65 per dollar, predict analysts at SberCIB Investment Research . In their opinion, the demand for foreign currency will gradually decrease at the beginning of the new year, while prices and physical volumes of Russian oil exports will begin to gradually recover. Another factor is the forthcoming large dividend payments, for which exporters will start selling foreign currency more actively. If the situation with Russian oil exports does not improve or gets worse, the ruble will remain at current levels, that is, about ₽70-75 per dollar, or weaken a little more, analysts warned.
15:17 on the air of Rossiya-24 First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov admitted that he was afraid of the loss of controllability of the Russian economy in the spring and early summer, but these points were passed thanks to the work of the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Central Bank.
“There were two serious points: March, especially the beginning of March, and the second point - approximately the end of April-June, this interval,” Belousov said. “What was the main risk? processes begin when the control system begins to act extremely reactively, and if the processes of chaos continue to grow, then the system can go haywire. Honestly, in March there was a moment when it seemed to me that we were moving in this direction "
14:06 Very warm weather and strong winds are waiting for northern Europe in early January, which will relieve the load on the energy systems. According to Bloomberg, the positive anomaly in Frankfurt on New Year's Eve will exceed 10 degrees - there will be +16, in Helsinki it will be +5. The price of gas at TTF has fallen for the seventh session in a row: today to 82 euros per megawatt-hour - below $900 per thousand cubic meters. As of December 25, gas storage facilities were 83.1% full.
13:23 The Central Bank recommends that the subcommittee, when issuing permits for payments to non-residents, fix the condition for the uniform conversion of rubles into foreign currency when a certain amount threshold is exceeded, learned Interfax . The goal is to minimize the impact of transactions on the volatility of the foreign exchange market.
The condition is a framework, the amounts of conversions by day are not agreed upon, the Central Bank noted. About what factors could have influenced the weakening of the ruble in December, The Bell wrote here .
12:31 Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov said that the strong ruble has played its role in the economy : now it brings only a drawdown in exports. And he repeated that exporters are comfortable with the exchange rate of 70-80 rubles per dollar. Today, the dollar is holding at 70 rubles after yesterday's 68.5.
12:23 The Ministry of Finance intends to fill the National Welfare Fund with yuan in 2023, because of the currencies of friendly countries, the yuan "to the greatest extent has the characteristics of a reserve currency and sufficient liquidity in our domestic foreign exchange market," Finance Minister Anton Siluanov . said
The condition for filling the NWF - and the benchmark for buying foreign currency - is the excess of oil and gas revenues over 8 trillion rubles. It may not come true given the alarming trends in the economy .
12:18 The position of the authorities on the taxation of Russians working from abroad has not yet been finally formed, said Finance Minister Anton Siluanov . According to him, in this matter, "the main thing is not to harm." This is how he commented on the proposals of the State Duma to abolish preferential tax regimes for individual entrepreneurs and the self-employed and force them to pay 30% of personal income tax.
11:12 The Central Bank closed the deal for the sale of Otkritie. 100% of the bank's shares were transferred to VTB, according to the regulator's website. The deal amounted to 340 billion rubles. In the course of an independent assessment, Otkritie was valued in the range of 328–374 billion rubles. VTB paid for the purchase in cash in the amount of approximately 233 billion rubles, and the rest in federal loan bonds.
The Central Bank became the owner of Otkritie in 2017, sanitizing it according to a new scheme - with the involvement of the Banking Sector Consolidation Fund. This year, the regulator planned to hold an IPO of Otkritie, but sanctions against the bank made it impossible to place shares on the market. In the spring, the head of VTB, Andrey Kostin, proposed to the government that the Crimean RNCB be attached to his bank Otkritie. The idea was supported by Putin and Nabiullina, the head of the "Discovery" Mikhail Zadornov was against .
The main thing for the night and morning:
- China is dismantling the remnants of “zero tolerance” for the coronavirus: from January 8, will be lifted an eight-day quarantine for entering the country . The rapid spread of the virus in a giant population without natural immunity threatens the emergence of new strains, experts warn. The number of travel requests to mainland China from Hong Kong, meanwhile, has grown sixfold.
- Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Central Bank Alexei Zabotkin predicted in an interview with RBC that the Russian economy will return to the level of 2021 "somewhere in 2025." If this was a cyclical downturn, the Central Bank’s policy would return it to normal in a year, as in 2020, the problem is that a structural decline in potential is now taking place. He did not rule out an increase in the rate in the event of a “significant realization” of pro-inflationary risks, which are mentioned a lot in the December report of the Central Bank.
- The Ministry of Agriculture again spoke with producers about the price ceiling for sugar, this time at the level of 50-53 rubles per kilogram in wholesale deliveries. Over the past week, wholesale prices have jumped by 10-15%, which suppliers tend to attribute to the weakening of the ruble. The price agreement was valid in 2020-2021 (at the level of 36 rubles per kilogram), but the effectiveness of this mechanism is doubtful.
- Rusagro, whose receipts were suspended by the London LSE, intends to get a listing on a third-country exchange with access to Euroclear by the summer of 2023. This will unlock the GDRs of shareholders who bought them on the London Stock Exchange.
- After shooting on the border with partially recognized Kosovo last night (Kosovo special forces were blamed in Serbia), President Aleksandar Vucic ordered the country's armed forces to be put on alert. There will be no war in Kosovo until the end of the New Year holidays, and most likely after, analyzes the situation . Kommersant