Foreign currency sales on increase: Russians sold more foreign currency than they bought in January for the first time in two years, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) said yesterday, in a possible indication that last year’s rouble crisis may be coming to an end. Individual Russians sold $6.7 billion in dollars and euros at banks and licensed exchange points in January, $300 million more than they bought over the same period, according to the bank. This is a sharp decline from the previous month when they bought the equivalent of $21 billion and sold $12.5 billion. Despite this cooling of domestic demand for hard currency, however, the rouble still fell almost 20 % against the dollar during the first month of the year.
Source: The Moscow Times