OREANDA-NEWS. In the week ended 20 August, the ruble fluctuated near the 38 against the bi-currency basket. On Thursday, the ruble had strengthened to 37.62 (based on EUR&USD official rates). This was due to high oil prices and the beginning of the tax payment period, which runs through the end of next week, reported the press-centre of OTKRITIE FC.

We continue to consider a second wave of devaluation possible, though this is unlikely to occur in the very near future. The ruble will move to upper boundary of the corridor established by CBR for the bi-currency basket, which is 41.

On Thursday CBR issued a report detailing the country’s international currency reserves for the week ended 14 August, revealing that Russia’s reserves decreased by US2.8bn, reaching US 400.6bn. This confirms the fact that the run against the ruble was quite modest and CBR’s interventions were not sizable. The revaluation of different components of the reserves had little material effect because the cross-rates of the currencies included in the reserves remained stable.