Major Russian banks have called on the central bank to take action to counter a yuan liquidity deficit, which has led to the rouble tumbling to its lowest level since April against the Chinese currency and driven yuan swap rates into triple digits.

The rouble fell by almost 5% against the yuan on Sept. 4 on the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) after the finance ministry’s plans for forex interventions implied that the central bank’s daily yuan sales would plunge in the coming month to the equivalent of $200 million.

The central bank had been selling $7.3 billion worth of yuan per day during the past month. The plunge coincided with oil giant Rosneft’s 15 billion yuan bond placement, which also sapped liquidity from the market.

“We cannot lend in yuan because we have nothing to cover our foreign currency positions with,” said Sberbank CEO German Gref, stressing that the central bank needed to participate more actively in the market. The yuan has become the most traded foreign currency on MOEX after Western sanctions halted exchange trade in dollars and euros, with many banks developing yuan-denominated products for their clients. Yuan liquidity is mainly provided by the central bank through daily sales and one-day yuan swaps, as well as through currency sales by exporting companies.

Chinese banks in Russia, meanwhile, are avoiding currency trading for fear of secondary Western sanctions.

  • @[email protected]English
    30•3 months ago

    Reminder that all they had to do to have lower sanctions, avoid having funds frozen, not have parts of Russia occupied, and avoid their current economic troubles…

    was to NOT FUCKING INVADE ANOTHER COUNTRY!!! They can still go back to that, but they need to GTFO of Ukraine, return stolen people and property, plus Putin and those responsible must stand trial and pay reparations.

    • @[email protected]English
      11•3 months ago

      Not even! They only have to make a peace deal with Ukraine, which restores Ukraines borders. Reparations, trials and so forth would be nice, but the war is extremely expensive for Ukraine as well. So they probably agree to letting Russia go off light, if that ends the war quickly.

      • OptionalEnglish
        5•3 months ago

        Putin is not getting off that easy. Ya boi’s going down one way or another. At the moment it appears to be economic servitude to China.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•3 months ago

          His economy will crash, russia is running a 100% wartime economy that will be grinding to a halt as soon as no new material is needed. Weirdo Putin done fuck up

        • @[email protected]English
          2•3 months ago

          Even that peace deal, would be a massive loss for Putin. Before the full scale invasion he controlled Crimea and large parts of Donetzk and Luhansk. He would loose that. Further more he lost a lot of men in the fighting. According to Ukraine it is over half a million casulties already. Lots of Russians also left the country to avoid fighting. That is not to mention the losses of huge parts of the old Soviet stockpiles. Then he lost most of the national wealth fund. In terms of natural gas exports the EU has most of those covered without Russian gas already. Those are long term contracts, so Russia will only be able to take back part of what they lost. All of that in a shrinking market thanks to new policy within the EU to try to save gas. Cutting military spending, means a lot of Russians loose well paying jobs, which is going to tank the economy.

          In other words, that peace deal would be a massive strategic loss. It might not be fair, but it would save Ukranian lifes and might very well save more money in damages, then Russia can pay in reparations.

  • @[email protected]English
    7•3 months ago

    China: “sure we’ll loan you more yuan…. Just sign here, here and here…. Oh thank you for using your industries as collateral. We’ll be by to collect later.”