OREANDA-NEWS  The development of the wound infrastructure of the Russian financial market will pave the way for the issuance by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation of bonds denominated in Chinese currency, possibly as early as this year, experts interviewed by RIA Novosti believe.

"There is already a groundwork for this. In particular, mutual swap lines in yuan and rubles have been operating between the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the National Bank of China since 2014, which are used to finance foreign trade operations in national currencies. Their limit is 150 billion yuan," notes Vladimir Evstifeev from Zenit Bank.

The resumption of the budget rule with the sale of yuan in the Russian Federation makes it possible to assume that the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and the Bank of Russia have gained greater freedom of action in transactions with the currency of the People's Republic of China, says Valery Weisberg from the IC "Region". "This, in turn, gives hope that Chinese financial institutions will also increase their activity, and Russian ones may be allowed to operate in the Chinese domestic financial market," he adds. In the meantime, there are few instruments in yuan on the Russian financial market, which reduces the flexibility of owning this currency, says Vladimir Evstifeev from Zenit Bank. "In particular, the money market lacks medium- and long-term ruble/yuan interest rate swaps, or the ability to place/lend on the interbank market in Chinese currency. The purpose of the development of the sector will be to repeat the infrastructure of the dollar, which was previously on the Russian market," the expert believes.
Without increasing the number of counterparties from China, it is impossible to build a full-fledged financial infrastructure for the yuan in the Russian market, Evstifeev believes. "One of the directions for the development of the stock infrastructure may be the coordination of Russian depositories with Chinese ones, or the creation of a common clearing between the two countries," he adds.

In addition to traditional instruments, Russian and Chinese investors would be interested in instruments denominated in digital yuan, and in the medium and long term – in digital rubles, Natalia Milchakova from Freedom Finance Global believes. At least, the digital yuan is already well in demand in the domestic Chinese market, she adds.