Central Bank expects to maintain structural liquidity surplus in July
MOSCOW. July 17 (Interfax) - Russia's Central Bank expects that the country's banking sector will maintain a structural liquidity surplus in July, according to commentary by the regulator on liquidity.
The Central Bank said that a short-term return to a deficit was possible at the end of the period of averaging out reserve requirements.
The banking sector maintained a structural liquidity surplus in June. There were certain days where significant outflow and inflow of liquidity toward banks was observed. However, at the end of the month the overall impact of these factors was not big, the Central Bank said.
In June dividend payments of major banks with government stakes took place. The Bank of Russia received 0.1 trillion rubles from Sberbank, where it owns a stake of 50%+1 share. These funds will be transferred to the federal budget for 2018. In addition, liquidity outflow came about as a result of seasonal growth in the amount of cash withdrawals in the run up to the summer vacation season.
Liquidity inflow into banks came about as a result of the Federal Treasury increasing placements into the budget on bank deposits. In addition, around 25 billion rubles came from banks through the financing of state projects using money from the National Welfare Fund (NWF).
The Central Bank noted that the situation with forex liquidity on the whole remained favorable in June, demonstrated by future growth in annual baseline swap prices for USD-RUB to its highest level in many months. The effect this had at the end of the quarter was moderate and did not affect internal dollar rates on the Russian money market.