By Greg Walters
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Russia won’t let the ruble float freely and may continue to widen the band in which the currency is allowed to trade, the first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, Alexei Ulyukayev, said.
“We will not allow it to float freely and we won’t scrap the limits,” Ulyukayev said in an interview with the radio station Ekho Moskvy posted on its Web site. “We have widened the boundaries and apparently, in some way, will continue to widen them to make it a quasi-free flotation.”
The bank has widened the trading band six times, “each time symmetrically and by about 1 percent,” he said.
The ruble was at 31.9090 versus the central bank’s currency basket as of 5 p.m. Dec. 12, the weakest end of the band that was widened by 30 kopeks, or 1 percent, Dec. 11. U.S. dollars make up 55 percent of the basket. The rest is in euros. It is used to limit currency swings that affect exporters. Ulyukayev said the ruble’s recent trend lower may reverse.
“Let’s talk in a few months, when we see it can move in more than one direction,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Walters in Moscow gwalters1@bloomberg.net
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