Tomorrow Deals Amount to $500m at Special Session

Participants of the special session for deals with tomorrow settlements have been highly active. This is testified to by the considerable volume of deals, which was almost $0.5bn by noon. Dealers of commercial banks link this situation to the massive selling of dollars by exporters. At the same time, this considerable supply of US currency did not lead to the ruble's strengthening by the end of the first half of the day.

Specialists attribute a lack of the dollar rate drop to the Central Bank's active purchases of US currency. According to experts, the Central Bank bought at least $450m as of 11:50. The Bank has been buying at RUR31.10 per dollar, and the weighted average dollar exchange rate is currently equal to this rate.