Investment banker Kogan: Ministry of Finance will not tolerate abnormally low dollar exchange rate

Yekaterina Maksimova

Investment banker, HSE professor, author of the Bitkogan project Yevgeny Kogan called today's course anomalous. "The situation is anomalous: in one day I see the strengthening of the ruble by 5% - this is really a lot," Evgeny Kogan wrote in his TG channel. Evgeny Kogan explained to Novye Izvestia what was happening.

-What is happening today is a unique situation. I think that, most likely, for some reason, a large seller of currency arose. There are two versions of what is happening. The first is that one or several exporters are now forced to sell the currency, since now is the tax period and you need to pay the MET (mineral extraction tax - ed.). And traders of large exporters simply sell the currency. The deadline is May 20, you need to pay. There is another option: if someone had a margin call (broker's requirement to replenish the brokerage account. - ed.), someone big. This is also theoretically possible. Both cases mean a one-time perturbation of the system, but in the future, I believe, neither for the Ministry of Finance nor for the Central Bank (especially for the Ministry of Finance) the situation is intolerable. Because our budget expenditures are already growing, and revenues on such a dollar are rapidly declining. Therefore, I think that sooner or later there will be an intervention to settle the dollar at a more comfortable level for the budget. There is another option that urgently introduce changes on the subject of the mandatory sale of foreign exchange earnings. The rules will change. Either one or the other will happen.

Promsvyazbank's analysts also explained the results of today's trading by the approaching tax period - at the end of May, exporting companies convert foreign exchange earnings, thereby creating additional demand for the ruble. “In the absence of additional actions from the Central Bank, the dollar exchange rate has the potential to gain a foothold at levels below 60 rubles. against the backdrop of the approaching tax period,” say analysts at Bank Saint Petersburg.

As for relaxations for Russian exporters, who are now forced to sell up to 80% of their foreign exchange earnings, Alexander Razuvayev, an economist and member of the Supervisory Board of the Guild of Financial Analysts and Risk Managers, suggested that this figure could change from 80% to 50%.