Russian exporters required to report weekly on forex sales, repatriation as of Aug 21
MOSCOW. Aug 18 (Interfax) - The Russian authorities have instructed exporters to ensure that they place as much forex revenue as possible in their accounts at Russian banks and increase forex sales, several sources familiar with the situation told Interfax.
As of August 21, exporters will have to report to the relevant authorities weekly about the amount of forex revenue they have repatriated and sold, one of the sources said.
Interfax sources said earlier that government agencies and the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) were in talks with exporters on measures to stabilize the ruble's exchange rate, including the reinstatement of mandatory sales of forex revenue. Senior officials of the government, CBR, Finance Ministry, Economic Development Ministry and Energy Ministry met with major exporters on Monday with the aim of finding measures to stabilize the ruble, one source said. At this meeting, representatives of the ministries and the CBR asked the companies to increase forex sales on the market and to report on the scale of these sales.
They also discussed the transparency of the distribution of forex earnings within companies and the possible use of intermediaries, one source said. In connection with this, they discussed the possibility of monitoring the accumulation of forex abroad, the source said.
If these measures have no effect by the end of the week, the authorities were prepared to reimpose mandatory sales of forex earnings on the domestic market.
However, business daily Vedomosti reported on Wednesday that the authorities had decided not to reimpose mandatory sales of forex earnings for the time being and that they would only monitor the actions of exporters.
The paper said the Cabinet managed to informally reach an agreement with exporters to increase their sales of forex revenue, so for now it had decided to only monitor their actions. Representatives of the business community in general agreed to sell more forex revenue.
If the situation does not change, mandatory sales of export earnings will become inevitable, one of the paper's sources said.
The Finance Ministry and CBR have not responded to questions from Interfax.
In February 2022, Russia introduced a number of restrictions on the movement of capital, including the mandatory sale of 80% of foreign currency earnings on the part of exporters. This threshold was later lowered to 50% and as of June 10 it was reduced to zero.
On June 21, the government commission on foreign investment decided to allow exporters to deposit forex received from nonresidents under foreign trade contracts in their accounts abroad without having to return it to an authorized bank, meaning without repatriation. However, it was clarified that repatriation requirements would remain for resource exports.
The president later issued an order that equated the amount of mandatory forex revenue repatriation to the level of mandatory forex sales. This essentially eliminated mandatory repatriation, except for resource exports.