Since the dollar began to slide down inevitably, a true revolution happened in the minds of the Russian citizens. According to the recently conducted research, the number of Russians, who trust the U.S. currency has reduced tenfold for the last six years.

Today the national ruble is in favour of the Russians: over two thirds of citizens think it stable, though in 2002 only 37% preferred to keep their savings in rubles. The Euro has won the second place: it is popular with 27% of respondents. Experts say the European currency has achieved a good result compared to 11% six years ago.

However, the image of the dollar has been ruined almost totally for the last 6 years. There are only 3% of the Russians feeling warm towards it, while 2002 saw 35% of dollar fans. By the way, 3% is the lowest index ever recorded in opinion surveys.

Presently just 1% of the Russians keep money in dollars. The economic crisis is raging in the United States, thus, it is no wonder that “the green” lost their positions in Russia and some other countries. This is the opinion of 20% of respondents. At the same time 7% believe the dollar is getting cheaper due to the aggressive political course of the USA. Interestingly, some people subscribe to another point of view: they suspect the Americans developed the crisis artificially in order to make a profit of world-spread economic perturbation.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the Russians, about 70%, consider the drop of the dollar rate not able to somehow affect their prosperity. Many find it profitable, as prices on lots of foreign products are fixed in dollars and grew cheaper in rubles. Besides, the dollar rate no longer attracts much attention: only every other citizen monitors the dollar’s decrease against the ruble.

Analysts have no common opinion concerning the future of the American currency. Many of them are confident it will have recovered losses by the end of the year. One of FxTeam financial analysts marks that the ruble is likely to gain despite the global economical slowdown. He supposes that the U.S. dollar may well cost 20-22 rubles by the end of 2009, providing that the world biggest Central Banks are not going to take steps to strengthen the American currency.

The research showed that over 20% of people regard the ruble as the best currency to keep savings in. This data is confirmed by the Federal State Statistics Service indicating a 41.3% increase of the volume of ruble bank deposits in 2007, while the amount of foreign currency deposits grew 5.8%.

The ruble rate fluctuations are certainly more predictable than the foreign currencies’ rate. However, the high inflation level works against the ruble; from the beginning of the year it made up 5.3%, which may lead to 12%-15% by the end of the year.

Sources:

    www.finiz.ru
    Russian Business
 

Olga Pletneva