Page 45 - RusRPTApr19

Central Bank of Russia (CBR). This implies a $10.5bn surplus in February alone and beats the $20.6b surplus seen for the first two months of 2018.
While the average price of Brent oil in January-February was almost 8% year- on-year lower, the weaker ruble (down by 17% against the US dollar and by 13% against the bi-currency basket of 0.55 dollar and 0.45 euro) resulted in some decrease in imports, Sberbank CIB commented on March 13. As reported by bne IntelliNews, capital outflow from the private sector reached $18.6bn in January-February.
In February alone, the outflow stood at $8.2bn, jumping from $2.7bn. "Still, the February capital outflow figure was below the $10.5bn registered in January," Sberbank notes, suggesting that "one reason for the lower capital outflow from the private sector was the increase in FX purchases by the Central Bank of Russia, which bought $4.2bn last month, compared with just $2.8bn in January."
The CBR too attributed the outflow to cutting foreign debt by the Russian banks and simultaneous piling of export cash on accounts. In the first half of 2018 this was neutralised by the regular purchases of foreign currency by the Finance Ministry on the open market, which was halted in the second half of 2018 following sanction-induced market volatility. Sberbank CIB expects capital outflow to gradually slow in the upcoming months and to amount to $25bn-30bn for 2019 overall.
45 RUSSIA Country Report April 2019 www.intellinews.com