Putin praises CBR's ruble exchange rate policy

Source: Prime-Tass

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the Central Bank of Russia's (CBR) ruble exchange rate policy at his meeting with Horst Koehler, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Thursday.

"The Central Bank conducts a rather prudent policy, considering the anything but simple situation with the pressures on the foreign exchange market," Putin said.

He also said that there might be diverging opinions on what is necessary to improve macroeconomic indicators.

"However, in my opinion, the Central Bank's policies are justified by the situation in Russia," Putin said,

The CBR has recently been providing considerable support, through interventions, to the U.S. dollar on the Russian domestic foreign exchange market, preventing the ruble from appreciating against the world's major currencies, primarily the dollar.

Nevertheless, the ruble has been rising recently on large export revenue inflows, coming primarily from oil sales. The CBR's official exchange rate for the ruble was 29.8104 against the dollar Thursday, up from 30.6142 on October 1, and from 31.7844 at the year-start.