Ruble is becoming cheaper :: Charter'97 :: News

It is for the first time since February 2006 that the National Bank has raised the dollar/Belarusian ruble exchange rate (per 1 BYR up to 1.41 BYR/USD) at the Belarusian foreign exchange market.

We can’t exclude that the increase of the dollar/ruble exchange rate on 2 February is a starting point of the lengthy period of the Belarusian ruble weakening, the” Belarusi i Rinok” newspaper reports. Such actions seem to be preferable to a one-time devaluation of the ruble.
The decision of the National Bank might have been affected by the totals of the foreign exchange trading at the Belarusian foreign exchange market for January.

According to the BFEM data, the volume of foreign exchange transactions totaled BYR 2289.4 billion in January being 1.3% lower in comparison with the total for December .USD 738.3 million, EUR 74.5 million, RUB 5654.9 million were sold at the exchange.

Thus, the demand for dollars appeared to be higher than offer by USD 317.6 million, however in January 2006 the excess was only USD 70.5 million and in December 2006-USD 253.7 million. However, the offer of the Russian ruble and grivna considerably increased and partially compensated the dollar demand raise. Nevertheless the total demand for all currencies exceeded the offer totally by USD 220 million, i.e. 2.2. times as compared to the same month of the previous year.