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Finance minister says US Fed rate hike will not have serious impact on ruble exchange rate

On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve System acting as the national central bank raised the base interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.75-1%

MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/. The policy of the US Federal Reserve System on raising the base interest rate will not have an impact on the ruble exchange rate, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

"This won’t have an impact on the situation with balance of payments in general, because that was predictable - that is the first point. Second point is that Russia is less dependent on the volatility of capital flows. We created the necessary reserves, buffers for such changes. Therefore, we are less dependent on a hike of federal reserve rate," he said.

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US Federal Reserve System raises base interest rate by 25 p.p to 0.5-0.75%

Siluanov does not expect any serious consequences of such a policy of the Federal Reserve System, despite the fact that it plans to increase the base interest rate up to three times in 2017. "We believe that this will not seriously affect our forecasts," he added.

On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve System acting as the national central bank raised the base interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.75-1%.

The Fed rate increase was expected by experts.

In its statement the Federal Open Market Committee said that the raise of the base interest rate does not mean faster normalization of monetary policy in the United States and that this process will be gradual. In accordance with this, two more rate hikes are expected this year and three in 2018.

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