Euro goes down

Following today's special euro session, the weighted average exchange rate of the European currency reached EUR/RUR36.21, which is 0.21 rubles below the official euro rate set by the Central Bank of Russia for February 11. In other words, it is for the first time over the past three working days that the euro lost its position against the ruble on the domestic market. It is worth mentioning that on February 6, 9, and 10, it was the ruble that was falling against the euro, loosing 0.69 rubles in total.

The euro loosing its position against the ruble is prompted by the dollar moving up against the euro on international exchanges. Currently, the euro is traded at $1.2680, against $1.2780 yesterday. Consequently, the US dollar has edged up some 0.8 percent against the European currency since yesterday.

The weighted average dollar exchange rate with tomorrow settlements amounted to RUR28.53 as of 11:30 Moscow time, driving the official dollar rate set for February 12 up by RUR0.02, which is exactly equal to yesterday's rise in the dollar.

There were few reasons for this growth in the dollar rate however. On the contrary, many commercial bank experts expected the dollar to go down owing to the fact that banks were selling dollars in huge amounts yesterday. Additionally, in the past after buying dollars in large volumes the Central Bank used to loosen its support to the dollar on the next day, letting the ruble up. Yet none of these events took place this time, as the Central Bank keeps stalling the strengthening of the ruble by purchasing dollars at RUR28.4850.