MOSCOW, June 5. /TASS /. Russia’s Finance Ministry states a gradual decrease in the dependence of the ruble exchange rate on oil prices, Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev said in an interview with TASS.

"If we look at the dependence of the dynamics of the exchange rate and the dynamics of oil prices since February (2017 - TASS), when we started these operations (purchases of foreign currency - TASS), we see that the correlation has strongly changed and decreased," he said.

"This is a slow process, but we are approaching this goal," the deputy minister added.

In February 2017, the Finance Ministry started buying and selling foreign currency on the domestic foreign exchange market. The Central Bank was appointed as the agent to buy the currency on the market and to transfer it to the Treasury account.

The volume of transactions on purchase/sale of foreign currency depends on the amount of oil and gas revenues of the federal budget.

While the actual price of Urals oil exceeds the level of $40 per barrel, the Finance Ministry will conduct operations on purchase of foreign currency for the sum of additional oil and gas revenues. In the case of lower Urals oil price, the Ministry will carry out operations on sale of foreign currency in the amount of shortfall in oil and gas revenues.

Earlier it was reported that the Federal Treasury may begin to buy currency for the current budget expenditures also using additional revenues from oil exports from January 2018.