Dollar rate goes up again

Early at today's US dollar special session, the weighted average exchange rate with tomorrow settlements amounted to 30.35 RUR/USD. This figure is RUR0.05 higher than the official rate for August 4. This means that the ruble weakening that started last Wednesday has continued for the fourth consecutive day. Over this period the dollar has gained RUR0.10.

Commercial bank dealers mainly attribute the increase in the dollar rate to the end of the period of tax settlements and payments to the Obligatory Reserve Fund (FOR), which again brought about a normalization of the situation with ruble liquidity and emerging of a large amount of available ruble resources on the market.

As commercial bank specialists told RBC, this morning, one-day ruble credit rates have reached 2 to 4 percent, which is a rather low level. At the same time, the dollar purchases have been slack so far. For example, 12 minutes after the special session started only $250,000 were bought.