MOSCOW, December 20. /TASS/. The Moscow Exchange plans to launch trading in the UAE dirham, Azerbaijani manat and Egyptian pound on the foreign exchange market in 2023, Yury Denisov, Chairman of the Board of the Moscow Exchange, told reporters

"This year, we launched trading in five new currencies - the Armenian dram, the South African rand, the Uzbek sum, the Kyrgyz som and the Tajik somoni. We will continue to add new currency pairs. Our plans for 2023 include the launch of trading in the UAE dirham, the Azerbaijani manat and the Egyptian pound. These are all currencies of Russia's major foreign trade partners," he said.

Denisov noted that the shift of interest towards national currencies and the fact that they are replacing volumes of trading in dollars and euros has become a key trend on the currency market.

According to the Moscow Exchange, the share of operations in friendly currencies accounted for 34% of the total volume of spot operations in November, while at the beginning of the year it was less than 0.5%. Meanwhile, the volume of trading in yuan soared by 41 times, in the Turkish lira - by 17 times, the Belarussian ruble - 110 times, the Kazakh tenge - 13 times. The share of the US dollar on the spot market halved, while the share of the euro has slightly increased.

"There are several reasons why the euro’s share grew: firstly, this is the decline of the dollar, secondly, trade relations with European countries are being maintained and this ensures rather large demand and supply in terms of this currency," Denisov noted.

Kirill Pestov, managing director of the business development department at the Moscow Exchange, also noted that amid the growing demand for national currencies the exchange plans to launch trading on the futures and options market in such currency pairs as the Turkish lira - the Russian ruble, the Hong Kong dollar - the Russian ruble and the US dollar - the Chinese yuan.