Low balances of correspondent accounts results in dollar rate drop in afternoon

The balances of correspondent accounts at Russian commercial banks wentdown by 2.3bn rubles (about $73m) to less than 73bn rubles ($2.31bn) inRussia and by 2.6bn rubles ($82m) to less than 41bn rubles ($1.29bn) inMoscow today. These balances were the lowest after August 15, or almostover a month ago. As a result, demand for US currency has droppedsignificantly. The current deals on dollars on the domestic interbankmarket, which do not surpass RUR 31.65, testify to this low demand.In other words, the dollar exchange rate on the interbank market is onlyRUR 0.02 higher than the official dollar rate set by the Central Bank forSeptember 11. In addition, the afternoon trading session saw an extremelylow trade volume of tomorrow deals. It reached only $4.5m as of 12 p.m..