Traders say the strengthening of the dollar against the Russian currency was prompted by the statements of the Central Bank’s leadership. On April 9, Sergey Ignatyev, Chairman of the Central Bank, assured the Russian President that the ruble’s real effective exchange rate against a basket of currencies would not rise by more than 7 percent in 2004. As a result, many market traders reversed their policies.

An attack on the ruble was so strong that some analysts began correcting their forecasts of the exchange rate. In late March, most analysts believed that the dollar would cost no more than 28 RUR/USD by the end of 2004. NIKoil analysts were more pessimistic, expecting the US currency to be 26.2 RUR/USD.

“We are revising the forecast in terms of the weakening of the ruble, based on the figures given by government officials,” Alexey Vorobyov of ATON told the newspaper. The company’s previous forecast was 28.1 RUR/USD by the beginning of 2005. In particular, the analyst mentioned the statement of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, who said that the ruble’s real exchange rate against the dollar would strengthen by 8 percent in 2004 and by 2 percent in 2005.

NIKoil also corrected its estimates. “The ruble strengthens slower than we expected,” Konstantin Chernyshov, the company’s deputy chief analyst, said. He said forecast revisions were due not only to the statements of government officials, but also to the situation on the international market, where the dollar’s position was better than expected.

Anton Struchenevsky, an analyst with Troika Dialog, also changed his estimates. In his opinion, the statements by the country’s monetary authorities had nothing to do with changes on the forex market. “It is a big mistake to say that the Central Bank changed the country’s foreign exchange policy. The rules of exchange rate policy did not change, but the world around us has changed,” the analyst said. With a dollar/euro rate of 1.25 USD/EUR, Troika Dialog expected the dollar to cost 28 RUR/USD by the end of the year. And now, Mr. Struchenevsky thinks the American currency will rise to about 29 RUR/USD.