Russia's Finance Ministry to increase volume of daily currency/gold purchases as of July 5 by 1.5-fold to 5.4 bln rubles

MOSCOW. July 3 (Interfax) - Russia's Finance Ministry plans to allocate 123.8 billion rubles for the purchase of foreign currency/gold under the fiscal rule from July 5 to August 6, with the daily volume of transactions equivalent to 5.4 billion rubles, the ministry said.

This is nearly 1.5-fold more than the daily volume of 3.7 billion rubles from June 7 to July 4, totaling 71.1 rubles billion.

The Finance Ministry expects additional oil and gas revenues of 145.3 billion rubles from the federal budget in July. The deviation of actually received oil and gas revenues from the expected monthly volume was minus 21.5 billion rubles at the end of June.

The publication of new data by the Finance Ministry renders it possible to assess the volume of operations conducted by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) on the forex market associated with replenishing and utilizing the National Wealth Fund (NWF).

The CBR will buy or sell foreign currency in H2 2024, from July 1 to December 28, based on the adjustment to the volume of operations that the Finance Ministry has announced as part of the fiscal rule by the value of sales totaling 8.4 billion rubles per day. Operations were adjusted for sales of 11.8 billion rubles per day in H1 2024.

Consequently, accounting for the Finance Ministry's announced volume of operations, the CBR will sell foreign currency totaling around 3.0 billion rubles per day from July 5 to August 6, 2024, versus 8.1 billion rubles per day from June 7 to July 1, and against 4.7 billion rubles per day from July 1 to 4.