OREANDA-NEWS. November 17, 2008. First Vice PM Igor Shuvalov says there will be no surprises regarding the ruble exchange rate. "This is no reason to expect any surprises from us concerning the ruble exchange rate. There will be no such surprises. We’ll be taking absolutely transparent actions in line with the announcements and policy pursued by the Bank of Russia. There will be no sharp fluctuations in the exchange rate" – Shuvalov told journalists in the Moldavian capital on Friday.

According to the Vice PM, those who exchanged ruble-denominated funds for currency and are now "looking to capitalize" on that, encouraging the government to take actions aimed at exchange rate fluctuations. "If you look at trends, and how many financial resources were received from the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Russia, you will see in the graphs that nearly the same amount was exchanged for dollars" – noted Shuvalov. According to him, those, who are "hoarding currency" now, are looking forward to ruble devaluation, since this will be a new source of income for them. "When monetary funds are not sold as credit mass, some source of income is needed. Therefore you can see that they exert some pressure in order to lower the ruble exchange rate. But we will not allow that" – Shuvalov stressed. According to him, the ruble exchange rate will be raised and lowered in line with decisions of the Bank of Russia. "This is the key issue. The spokesperson of the Central Bank has come out and announced a change in the currency range and fluctuations take place within this range. There will be no sharp or unexpected fluctuations, as we promised, as there no pre-requisites for that" – Shuvalov stressed.