The pro-Kremlin mass media in Russia reports proudly on the successful implementation of the plan to trim the share of the US dollar in international settlements in favor of the ruble. At the same time, Russia’s Finance Ministry has been pumping its reserves with foreign currencies. From January 15 until February 6, the ministry aims to spend 18.2 billion rubles per day to buy foreign currencies. Moscow is going to allocate 244.5 billion rubles in total for forex interventions. This is 25% more than 195.5 billion rubles spent in December. “The amount of extra oil and gas revenue in the federal budget is projected to be +309.9 billion rubles in January 2020 that will come as a result of higher oil prices than it was priced in. The overall deviation of the actual oil and gas revenue from the projected figure for the previous month as well as the deviation of the flash estimate of oil and gas revenue for the month from the actual oil and gas revenue as of December 2019 equals +65.3. billion rubles. Therefore, the overall funds allocated for purchasing foreign currencies total +244.5 billion rubes. Forex interventions are scheduled to run from January 15, 2020 until February 6, 2020. It means that 18.2 billion rubles are earmarked to intervene on a daily basis,” the Finance Ministry says in the statement.
