Russian rouble stable vs US dollar after Putin and central bank statements
MOSCOW, Nov 29 (Reuters) -The Russian rouble was stable on Friday, the day after the central bank stopped foreign currency purchases and President Vladimir Putin said there was no need to panic about the fall of the Russian currency in recent days.
By 0830 GMT the rouble was 0.2% weaker at 107.8 against the U.S. dollar, according to data from banks, still at the lowest level since March 2022, the first month of the Ukraine war but above the level of 114.4 it had hit on Nov. 27.
Putin had said there was no need to panic about the fall of the rouble, and that its sometimes sharp fluctuations were related to budget payments and seasonal shifts.
Putin's statement followed a decision by the central bank not to buy foreign currency on the domestic market from Nov. 28 until the end of the year.
"Judging by trading volumes, it (the central bank's decision) has noticeably reduced nervousness. We expect a gradual normalisation of the situation and a decrease in volatility," PSB analyst Ebgeny Loktykhov said.
Putin and other officials have sought to spread calm through Russian financial markets since the rouble's fall with some blaming the slump on the global strength of the dollar following the U.S. election.
But analysts and economists attribute it in part to rising geopolitical tensions and new U.S. sanctions on Gazprombank, which handles payments for Russia's energy trade with Europe and is the major supplier of Western currencies to the market.
The rouble was up 0.2% at 14.69 against China's yuan, the most traded foreign currency in Russia after Western sanctions against the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) stopped all exchange trade in dollars and euros.
One-day rouble-dollar futures on MOEX, the only publicly available trading quote for the dollar rate, were down 0.3% at 108.24. The central bank set the official exchange rate to the U.S dollar at 109.58.
Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Daren Butler
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