OREANDA-NEWS  Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has approved the Russian Finance Ministry's desire to issue federal loan bonds (OFZ) in yuan. In a message on his Telegram channel, he called the strategy itself correct, although he admitted that it would not be easy to implement it.

According to the businessman, it is necessary to somehow explain to the Chinese partners that permission to use the yuan to place Russian government debt will give not only benefits, but also reliability. And if the parties agree on this issue, then Russian companies will get a way to borrow cheaper. Deripaska stressed that expensive loans today remain the main obstacle to Russia's prosperity and economic growth.

Denis Mamonov, head of the Department of Public Debt and Public Financial Assets of the Ministry of Finance, spoke about the work on the placement of OFZ in yuan yesterday. He admitted that it has not been possible to get Beijing's support for the initiative so far.

At the same time, the official pointed out that the yuan market for Russia has become the most liquid and promising segment of the foreign market, and the placement of government debt would allow progress in the development of financial infrastructure.

For the first time, Russia thought about placing OFZ in yuan in 2015, at that time it was about a billion dollars only for Chinese investors. Since then, there has been no progress in this direction.

In his ideas about too expensive loans as the main obstacle to development, Deripaska opposes a large number of experts and, in particular, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina. In her opinion, the main problem of the Russian economy remains the shortage of personnel, which cannot be removed with cheap money.