OREANDA-NEWS The majority of Russians consider it the most profitable to keep money savings in rubles (61 percent), only 15 percent of citizens gave preference to foreign currencies. This is evidenced by the results of a survey conducted by analysts of the Public Opinion Foundation.

The study was conducted among one and a half thousand respondents over the age of 18 in 104 cities and rural settlements in 53 subjects of Russia. Citizens were also asked what they would do if they could transfer savings only into foreign currency. The largest share of respondents — 32 percent — preferred the yuan.

The Chinese currency outperformed the euro (26 percent) and the dollar (23 percent). The yuan has become the most popular currency among all age categories, except for young people. Russians under the age of 30 were more likely to name euros and dollars (34 and 36 percent, respectively) as instruments for savings. The yuan won only 32 percent of their votes.

The British pound sterling (3 percent) and the Turkish lira (2 percent) were among the five most popular currencies for savings with a large gap from the leaders. Other options included the Arabic dirham, Swiss franc, Japanese yen (all scored 2 percent of the vote), as well as the Israeli shekel and the Iranian rial (1 percent each).

Earlier it was reported that Chinese state-owned banks this week began actively selling dollars for yuan on spot currency markets in order to save the national currency from falling. Since the beginning of August, the yuan has lost about 2.4 percent against the dollar, and since the beginning of the year — 6 percent.