The paradox of the year: the oil price is growing all the time, but the ruble exchange rate has frozen in place

Oil prices are rewriting records, and the ruble-dollar ratio does not change at all, analysts at Ecworld are surprised by 73. They provide graphs of the price of the Russian Urals crude oil, denominated in rubles.

This shows that a barrel of Russian oil has updated records for both 2021 and even 2018.

So why did oil increase by + 54% over the year, and the ruble by only + 2.4%? It can be seen that the graph of the ruble price (in green) is very different from previous years?

Experts are sure that the reasons are purely political. Here is some of them:

- an increase in budget revenues from external sources (a higher rate - more rubles are given by raw materials sold abroad (oil, gas, metal) at the same price in dollars, and therefore, companies pay more taxes);

- higher budget revenues from internal sources (the more inflation persists due to the high exchange rate, the more companies' revenues, the more taxes);

- maintaining a high exchange rate so that less currencies are exported to the border, currency liquidity is the main thing for the authorities here;

- the election year requires "gray" spending. For example, on “teachers” who did not sit on election commissions for nothing. And, of course, there are a lot of expenses to support the loyalty of regional elites;

- spending on "medicine", implying profit on "caring for the nation" during a pandemic, it is not for nothing that talks about strengthening the fight against coronavirus resumed after the elections with renewed vigor.

Experts are confident that costs will only increase until the presidential elections in 2024. In addition, the coronavirus helps, because it is easiest to make money on the fear of people.

And therefore, there can be no question of adequate strengthening of the ruble...