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Russia's $796 Million Error Sinks FX Purchases Into Irrelevance

  • Finance Ministry says daily purchases will be down almost 90%
  • Government seeking ‘market-based’ steps to stabilize currency

Foreign-exchange purchases by Russia’s Finance Ministry will be so negligible in the coming weeks that they will do little to cool off the ruble.

Daily purchases, conducted since February to soak up extra oil and gas budget revenue, will be down almost 90 percent in the coming weeks from a month earlier after an error in calculations, the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.