Signs advertising currencies light next to the exchange office in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Dec. 15, 2014. The price of crude oil continued to drop Monday, and Russia's ruble plunged to a record low against the dollar. The ruble crashed through 60 to the dollar, trading at 60.33 by early afternoon.(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
December 15, 2014 - 11:48 PM
MOSCOW - A massive overnight rate hike by Russia's Central Bank pushed the ruble 5 per cent higher in early trading on Tuesday, reversing the currency's fall but spelling troubles for the economy ahead.
The ruble traded at 61 per dollar less than an hour into the trading after losing about 10 per cent on Monday in the biggest fall since the 1998 economic meltdown.
The surprise Central Bank announcement to hike the rate to 17 per cent from 10.5 per cent came in the early hours on Tuesday in a desperate move to prop up the trouble currency. It's the biggest interest rate hike since 1998, a year when Russia defaulted on its sovereign bonds.
The move was meant to make it expensive for currency traders to buy rubles and sell them on the market.
The ruble has lost half of its value this year and the decline intensified in the past months by Western sanctions and plunging oil prices.
"With these steps, the Central Bank is looking to bring stability back to the (foreign exchange) market, which has been behaving irrationally over the last few weeks," Moscow-based investment bank Sberbank-CIB said in a morning note. "This state of affairs required extraordinary measures from the Central Bank — and such measures have now been taken."The bank, however, added that this step is unlikely to reverse the collapse of the ruble.
The central bank has gradually raised the rate from 5.5 per cent early this year. Last Thursday, it tried unsuccessfully to stem the ruble's slide by boosting its key rate by 1 percentage point to 10.5 per cent.
The rate increase, although it can help stabilize the ruble, could spell serious economic troubles ahead, making it more expensive for companies to borrow funds.
Alexei Kudrin, Russia's finance minister in 2000-2011, said on Twitter following the rate hike that "the fall of the ruble and the stock market is not just a reaction to low oil prices and the sanctions but also (a show of) distrust to economic policies of the government."
News from © The Associated Press, 2014