Any adjustment to forex regulation must not call into question floating exchange rate - Russian MinFin official

MOSCOW. Sept 28 (Interfax) - Any possible adjustment to regulation of Russian forex market must not call into question its basic principle of a floating exchange rate for the ruble, the head of the financial policy department at the Finance Ministry, Ivan Chebeskov told reporters on the sidelines of the Moscow Finance Forum.

He was commenting on the debate sparked by recent statements by Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov, who proposed solving the problem of high ruble volatility and inflation by studying the Chinese model for regulating the forex market and working out a similar approach in Russia, where there would be "a kind of membrane between the domestic ruble market and the foreign ruble market." The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has criticized the idea.

"We need to completely understand the terminology, what is a 'membrane' and what is meant by it. Probably, it doesn't mean restriction of the floating exchange rate of the ruble. That is, we don't believe that this is restriction of the floating ruble rate. And it seems to us that restricting the floating rate is inadvisable," Chebeskov said.

"We worked toward [a floating rate] for a very long time, this is a significant achievement of our country's whole macroeconomic policy. Therefore, any changes, in our view, should not restrict the floating rate. The whole economy operates, monetary policy works on this basic principle, imbalances in the economy decrease," Chebeskov said.

He said the idea voiced by the Economic Development Ministry needs to be understood "in greater detail," but "in general it should not contradict the floating rate." Chebeskov said he has not yet seen the ministry's official proposals.

"The reality is such that there is an unofficial ruble market onshore, meaning rubles are taken out, exchanged somewhere abroad, some of this comes to us on the forex market, some not. In other words, there really is such a phenomenon, it's less typical for us, we're trying to correctly calibrate balanced regulation in order to adjust to this reality. The Finance Ministry has proposed some of its own measures, the Central Bank, the Economic Development Ministry had proposals. In general, we're trying to find a balance in these proposals," Chebeskov said, adding that there have been many initiatives, but no specific decisions have been made.

Asked if the authorities have come to a consensus on any proposals, he said that already adopted measures are "the only thing on which a consensus has been reached."