The ruble will strengthen by the end of 2020, and the dollar will drop sharply to 60-62 rubles, the head of Sberbank German Gref predicts. Today, the official rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is 69.13 rubles per dollar.
In world markets, the dollar may depreciate by a third due to the growing second wave of coronavirus in the United States, the largest economy in the world. Rising oil may also support the ruble if there is no global pandemic return.
“Our national currency is closely linked to the price of oil, and it’s hard to predict. I trust one of the old and experienced analysts, Henry Grobe,” said Gref. “He calls $ 60-62 per barrel at the end of the year (now about $ 41 per barrel – Ed.). So the ruble will be in the range of plus or minus 60 to the dollar. “
Gref admits ruble exchange rate fluctuations due to the second wave of the pandemic, but “no one knows how the situation with the coronavirus will develop.”
The Russian economy copes with the economic crisis better than forecasts, including due to the floating ruble exchange rate and inflation containment around the target level of 4%. In 2014, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the government made the right decision – “released the ruble and moved on to inflation targeting.” “Of course, the economy today is much more flexible to the shocks we met. And it is experiencing a coronavirus much better than, say, I expected,” the head of Sberbank said in an interview TASS. According to him, the Russian economy by the end of 2020 will decline by 4.2-4.5% if the second wave of the pandemic does not appear.
According to the results of 2020, inflation will not exceed the target level of 4%, said the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin in an interview with Pavel Zarubin, author of the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” on the TV channel “Russia 1”.
“Now we have 3% per year. Even in today’s conditions, we set ourselves a benchmark of 4%, and most likely, somewhere around 4% will be,” Putin said.
The Russian economy has adapted and diversified, and its dependence on export oil and gas revenues is declining. The export of agricultural products has risen sharply and exceeds $ 25 billion. “You would have told someone in the early 2000s that we would have exported under 25 billion, no one would have believed. We took first place in the world in the export of wheat. This is just a real achievement!” – the president noted.
“Our industry has recently grown at 90%, and manufacturing – more than doubled,” the president of the Russian Federation emphasized, adding that “there is still much to be done to diversify the economy.”
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