OREANDA-NEWS. Russia needs to strengthen the ruble in order to have time to buy the equipment necessary for import substitution before the next package of Western sanctions, said economist Alexander Losev. At the same time, he stressed that the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation is not very interested in further strengthening the positions of the ruble, writes IA SM-News.

From the point of view of the economy and its prospects, it is now necessary for the ruble to strengthen further. So that the “105th package of sanctions” is not introduced against us, to have time to purchase equipment, to have time to buy components, to have time to acquire technologies in order to start production here,” Losev emphasized.

He called Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to pay for Russian gas in rubles "strategic." In his opinion, thanks to such an initiative, the domestic currency acquired a new “filling”. Losev noted that the reasons for the problems with inflation in Russia are the sharp fall of the ruble in February-March and difficulties with logistics supplies.

If we now localize production in the Russian Federation, if we switch supply chains to the countries of South and Southeast Asia, then maybe we will bring inflation to a level of 15% per year, and possibly even lower, the economist concluded.

Earlier, economist Ayaz Aliyev said that a fixed ruble exchange rate blocks an independent monetary policy. In addition, with this approach, you can lose foreign exchange reserves, he said. The advantage of a fixed exchange rate, the economist called certainty in exchange rates, which has a positive effect on the volume of international trade.