SAINT PETERSBURG, June 4. / TASS /. The Russian Central Bank sets task to increase international reserves to $500 bln in a few years, the Russian Central Bank Chief Elvira Nabiullina said at the International Banking Congress Thursday.
"One of the challenges in the near future is to increase reserves in a few years. In the best case scenario the reserves should be sufficient to cover the substantial capital outflows for 2-3 years. Therefore, a comfortable level of reserves now would be roughly $500 bln. This is the level that we were used to. We believe that the accumulation of reserves should be done gradually in order to be consistent with the primary purpose of our monetary policy - to reduce inflation to 4% in the medium term," she said.
As TASS reported earlier, the Russian Central Bank decided from May 13, 2015 regularly purchase foreign currency on the domestic foreign exchange market in order to replenish international reserves. This decision was made taking into account the normalization of the situation in the domestic foreign exchange market and is not aimed at maintaining a certain level of the exchange rate, the Central Bank said. Operations will be carried out on a daily basis in the amount of $100-200 mln.