Russian Central Bank to resume regular currency transactions according to budget rule starting in January

MOSCOW. Nov 27 (Interfax) - Starting in January 2024, the Bank of Russia will resume operations on the domestic foreign exchange market for the replenishment and use of funds from the National Wealth Fund (NWF), including taking all the operations conducted with monies from the fund in 2023 into account, the Central Bank said in a statement.

The daily volume and direction of transactions conducted on the domestic foreign exchange market during 2024 will be determined based on the balance of several quantifiable numbers:

1) Regular operations as part of the budget rule (their daily volume is determined by the Russian Finance Ministry)

2) The difference in the volume of regular operations deferred from August 10 to December 31, 2023 and the amount spent from the National Wealth Fund in order to finance the federal budget deficit for 2023 (the daily balanced volume is calculated based on the uniform distribution of the total amount for 12 calendar months, taking into account the number of trading days)

3) The volume of net investment by the National Wealth Fund in permitted financial assets in rubles conducted during H2 2023 - H1 2024 (the daily volume is calculated based on the uniform distribution of the total net investment by the National Wealth Fund for the past six months (that is, for H2 2023 and H1 2024, respectively) for six calendar months, taking into account the number of trading days)

The Central Bank plans to present a final calculation of the final daily net volume of transactions on the foreign exchange market in January 2024 in a separate press release at the end of December 2023. The CBR will take into account information from the Ministry of Finance on the use of NWF funds to finance the budget deficit outside the budget rule and the placement of NWF funds in permitted financial assets in rubles.