Ruble strengthens amid low activity of traders

The weighted average dollar exchange rate was down RUR 0.03 at RUR 31.53 bythe end of the morning trading session on the Russian currency market. Inother words, the official dollar rate for August 14 fell to the levelobserved more than a month ago, on July 9. This significant drop in theweighted average dollar rate, by RUR 0.03, was registered for the firsttime this August. The US currency rate dropped RUR 0.05 over the past twodays.Meanwhile, the strengthening of the Russian national currency took placeamid an extremely low activity of traders. A low trade volume, which wasbelow $57m, testifies to this. This trade volume, the lowers at the morningtrading session since August 1, was $30m less as compared to yesterday'strade volume..