Russian exporters selling around 70% of foreign currency earnings - Chikhanchin
MOSCOW. July 8 (Interfax) - Russian exporting companies subject to the presidential decree on the mandatory sale of foreign currency earnings are exceeding the established requirements for selling foreign currency earnings at around 70%, Yury Chikhanchin, director of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring), said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
"The majority of our exporters are law-abiding and respectable today. They sell approximately 70% amid the standard of 40%. The share of the ruble in transactions is growing and very significantly, with growth in trade in the currencies of friendly countries and a decrease of approximately 50% with unfriendly countries," Chikhanchin said, noting that transactions in dollars, euros, and pounds still exist, though the share has been decreasing significantly.
Rosfinmonitoring has also tracked 7 billion rubles worth of unfulfilled import contracts, Chikhanchin said. These cases are currently being investigated jointly with customs authorities, he said. Illegal asset withdrawals totaling around 60 billion rubles were also identified. "In total, this [currency monitoring] mechanism has helped recover approximately 130 billion rubles in additional funds," he said.
There is also an issue with not all foreign trade participants declaring their affiliated companies. "We've identified about 250 such companies involved in transactions totaling around 460 billion rubles," he said.
The mandatory repatriation and partial sale of foreign currency earnings by exporters was introduced in October 2023 for six months, later extended for one year until the end of April 2025, and then for another year until April 30, 2026. Neither the original decree nor subsequent amendments have been published, as these documents are classified as "for official use" due to the confidential list of exporting companies. Details of the regime are regulated by government resolutions.
Initially, exporters were required to deposit at least 80% of foreign currency received under foreign trade contracts into authorized bank accounts and sell 90% of this amount domestically. In June 2024, the government reduced the threshold from 80% to 60%, and then in July to 40%, meaning exporters must now sell 36% of their foreign currency earnings on the market.
Central Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina previously said that, in the regulator's view, extending or not extending the decree does not affect exchange rate dynamics because exporters are selling foreign currency earnings above the required levels. According to central bank data, since the beginning of the year exporters have sold around 90% of their foreign currency earnings on the domestic market.
"We see this in practice - regardless of how mandatory foreign currency sales requirements changed last year, on average our exporters sold up to 85% of foreign currency earnings. Now, over the past two months, we see about 90% being sold, despite much lower regulatory requirements. Therefore, this factor simply wasn't considered [when updating the Central Bank's macroeconomic forecast]," Nabiullina said.
