Russia’s appetite for the Chinese yuan has grown eightfold since May 20, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, the volume of trading in the ruble and yuan reached an all-time high of about $703 million this week.
Last week, Russian financial authorities said they wanted to weaken the ruble through purchases of „friendly” currencies.
Russians are switching to the Chinese yuan as Western sanctions on Moscow spur a desire to diversify away from the dollar and the euro.
Purchases of the yuan have risen eightfold since Russia’s central bank eased foreign exchange restrictions on May 20, state bank Otkritie said, according to Reuters.
“The Chinese yuan has shown stability and relatively low volatility in recent years, and it could become the main tool for diversifying foreign exchange savings,” Aliya Zubkova, deputy head of financial markets at Otkritie Bank, told Reuters.
According to the bank, sales of the popular pound sterling and Swiss franc increased by 2.5 times. Interest in other currencies also increased, but not so significantly.
In March 2022, for the first time in history, the yuan/ruble pair outstripped the USDRUB and EURRUB pairs in terms of the number of transactions, said Mikhail Shulgin, head of the global research department at Otkritie Investments. However, already in April, the dollar/ruble regained its leadership in this indicator, but the euro is still inferior to the yuan, although in June the volume of transactions almost equalized. According to the analyst’s calculations, the average trading volume in the pair in June amounted to 21.7 billion rubles a day on the spot market. This is 28% more than in May.