‘Thousand Cuts Tactic Will Have Its Impact Sooner Or Later’

Will the Russian ruble collapse, and the Belarusian ruble along with it?

What to expect from the Russian and Belarusian rubles after the sanctions against the Moscow Exchange?

— It is highly likely that after a few days or a maximum of weeks of uncertainty, the situation will calm down. The dollar exchange rate in Russia will be determined at over-the-counter trades — these are trades between banks, — Dzmitry Kruk, an economist and senior research fellow at BEROC, explained on the air of Ordinary Morning.

The expert drew an analogy with a swimming pool: they will manually decide what water level in the pool to fix at the moment, a smart mechanism will not be used.

— The Belarusian ruble is tied to the Russian ruble on a string, that is, all the problems of the Russian ruble, unfortunately, become ours. However, this coupling is not rigid, but flexible.

Now, when the Russian ruble has jumped after the introduction of sanctions, the National Bank can weaken this coupling on the Belarusian ruble as well, I am sure that this will be reflected to a lesser extent, that is, it will slightly follow the Russian ruble exchange rate, but the scale of fluctuations will not be so large.

The National Bank is still able to do this, provided that the Russian ruble, after fluctuations for a period of one or two weeks, settles at a new level, the economist believes.

— Therefore, for this reason (we leave other reasons out of the equation), I do not think that the situation is changing dramatically for the Belarusian ruble now.

For other reasons — the fact that we have enough of our own problems within the economy and in trade on the Russian market — these are now more important factors for the prospects of the Belarusian ruble on the horizon of a month to six months.

Dzmitry Kruk noted that over the past two years, the Russian currency market has been losing stability.

— Jumps and expected perturbations are becoming more and more likely. If something happens to the foreign exchange earnings, to Russia's ability to supply its oil products, which they now deliver to a large extent by shadow fleet to India, to China, then this small drop could become a serious and weighty argument.

We must remember that there are many other restrictions on the flow of incoming foreign exchange earnings to Russia, and all this together could lead in the future to the same jumps as in the fall, when the Russian ruble jumped, and its incredible efforts — raising the interest rate, establishing mandatory sale of foreign exchange earnings — stabilized it a little.

So as a summary: right now the situation will calm down, but the tactics of a thousand cuts will sooner or later make itself felt. This is one cut out of a thousand, — the expert concluded.