OREANDA-NEWS. From 17 March the Moscow Exchange has started trading in a futures contract on the currency pair Chinese Renminbi — Russian rouble.

The launch has been driven by a substantially increasing Renminbi turnover on the Exchange, growing volume of settlement in the currency between Russia and China as well as newly arising demand for hedging of such transactions.

Andrey Shemetov, First Deputy CEO of Moscow Exchange, said:

"The launch of the CNY/RUB futures is the next step made by the Moscow Exchange to offer a full range of Renminbi instruments and hedging tools to participants. We expect that the new contract will be liquid and in-demand as other Exchange's derivatives, and facilitate the trade turnover between China and Russia".

The contract is cash-settled against the Moscow Exchange CNY/RUB fixing.

The contract's expiry dates are every 15th day of March, June, September and December.

IM size is 12%.

Metallinvestbank will act as the market maker for the contract.

Moscow Exchange's turnover in the Chinese Renminbi grew 700% in 2014 to RUB 395 bln (CNY 48 bln). The record average daily trading volume of CNY 541 mln was seen in October.