Russia’s finance ministry to halve FX purchases in coming month

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s finance ministry said on Monday that it would halve its purchases of foreign currency and gold in the month ahead.

The finance ministry said its purchases of foreign currencies and gold for the period from May 8 to June 6 would amount to the equivalent of 110.94 billion roubles ($1.21 billion), or 5.55 billion roubles per day.

In the previous period, between April 5 and May 7, the ministry had planned to buy foreign currency worth 235.3 billion roubles ($2.57 billion), or 11.2 billion roubles per day.

($1 = 91.5625 roubles)

(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Christina Fincher)