OREANDA-NEWS The Russian banking system is facing an acute shortage of yuan. This is evidenced by the rise in overnight yuan loan rates on the Moscow Stock Exchange to 44 percent per annum.

In practice, this indicator means that banks are willing to borrow Chinese currency from each other at such interest rates, since there is not enough of it. Last year, rates were consistently around zero. In February, they temporarily jumped to 10 percent, but by March they had fallen back to 6 percent. Nevertheless, a sharp increase has begun since the beginning of this week.

By March 18, banks had already selected the entire limit of the Central Bank for yuan loans in the amount of five billion yuan. Last year, financial institutions were not interested in such loans at all.

As Mikhail Vasiliev, chief analyst at Sovcombank, noted, Russian companies use yuan for trading, however, unlike the dollar and euro, it is difficult to obtain this currency. Chinese banks try not to give yuan to Russians, so they can only be taken on the Russian stock exchange. Due to the upcoming revision of the budget rule in recent weeks, the Ministry of Finance has refused to sell foreign currency, which led to a deficit.

The same factor is cited as one of the reasons for the ruble's decline by more than ten percent since the beginning of March. In addition, the national currency is affected by the reduction in oil and gas revenues since the beginning of the year and the expected reduction in the key interest rate.