Russia’s central bank expects foreign exchange reserves to expand by tens of billions of dollars each year due to higher interest rates on the world’s markets, the central bank’s First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said on Sunday.
“Foreign exchange reserves will grow by tens of billions of dollars per year, but the nature of their origin will change. Income from investments will account for a considerable part of the reserves as we expect an increase of interest rates in 2013-2014 (on the world’s markets),” Ulyukayev told a banking forum.
He also said that by this time the regulator planned to shift from purchase of foreign currency to refinancing operations while offering liquidity to commercial banks. Refinancing is a primary monetary instrument in developed countries used to affect money supply.
“Volumes of refinancing are to grow to 1.5-2 trillion roubles ($50.7-67.6 million) from hundreds of billions of roubles by this time,” he added.
Russia’s international reserves amounted to $545 billion as of September, 1 compared to $479 billion at the beginning of the year.
Ulyukayev also said that Russian banks would boost their credit portfolio to 12 percent in 2011.