Europe Believes Rubles Is Convertible
Oddly, when Russia removed the last significant obstacles to the free movement of capital, in the summer of 2006, it was not taken as a signal in the country that the ruble had become a freely convertible currency. The dynamics of Russian banks' obligations to nonresidents (i.e., the amount of money banks owe to foreign organizations), data published by the Central Bank in October 2007, shows that sum approaching $30 billion. There is a clear change in those indicators taking place in the spring of 2006, when the ruble debt of the banks, which had not exceeded $3.5 billion for many years, began to grow. By the end of 2007, the share of rubles in that debt had topped 20 percent.
Central Bank data also indicate that the ruble is growing in popularity among foreigners with Russian bank accounts along with the euro. The share of rubles in foreigners' bank accounts has grown from 6 percent in 2000 to 10 percent today, while the number of dollar accounts has dropped from 72 to 69 percent in the same time.
It has been suggested that the rubles new popularity is centered in the CIS, but Central Bank statistics indicate otherwise. The majority of foreign ruble account holders are citizens of EU countries, especially the English, who have $29 billion worth of rubles in Russian banks. The British are followed by Luxembourgers, Germans, Austrians, Chinese and Americans in the ranked list of account holders' nationalities.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 22, 2008
|
