Limit on FX purchases upon departure of foreigners from Russian assets to be uniform for all deals - Moiseyev
MOSCOW. April 27 (Interfax) - The limit on FX purchases on the domestic Russian market for "unfriendly" foreign companies when selling assets in Russia will be uniform for all transactions, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseyev told reporters.
"The limit will be uniform. The point is that there will be no influence on the FX market. In other words, this means that, relatively speaking, the commission allowed the sale of the business for such and such amount, but the currency may be bought within a certain period, so as not to violate the limit," Moiseyev said.
He noted that there will be no limit to a specific period for FX purchasing (for example, when the ruble is seasonally stronger).
"There will be any particular fine-tuning. There will be a general limitation, because otherwise we'll be manipulating the exchange rate, and we don't want this," the deputy minister said on the sidelines of the "Banks. Transformation. Economy. 2.0" conference organized by RBC.
The issue of introducing a limit on the conversion of rubles into FX when foreign businesses leave Russia is now under consideration. "I can't tell you the figure right now. In general, of course, it seems to me that this is a correct and necessary linkage with asset sales permissions," Moiseyev said.
"If for any reason, related, for example, to the need to preserve technological chains, there are some other things, when the commission decides that a foreigner needs to pay money, and this money is substantial, then, of course, it should be bought in the domestic market in a way that does not affect the exchange rate," the deputy minister said.
Earlier, the Ministry of Finance did not rule out that the limit on conversion operations that are carried out on the foreign exchange market to pay for transactions for the acquisition of Russian assets from "unfriendly" non-residents leaving Russia may not be fixed. It can be a kind of floating value, which depends on the situation on the foreign exchange market, the ministry's press service told Interfax in mid-April.
Decisions on issuing permits for transactions like these are made by a subcommittee of the government commission on foreign investment, headed by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. The practice of regulating foreign exchange transactions as they pertain to a particular transaction has existed since last year, but so far it has concerned individual transactions (for example, an application was granted on condition that the purchase of foreign currency on the domestic market is limited $150 million per day).