Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak does not rule out that in the future, Russia might place loans yuan. “It will depending on market conditions,” he said, answering a question from TASS on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank officials in Washington.
“If we find it convenient technologically and in terms of price parameters, we will do it,” he added.
According to Storchak, it is not connected with the fact that the IMF has recently officially included yuan in the reserve currencies pool. “It has no connection with it,” he said, adding that the so-called “special drawing rights”, calculated IMF currencies pool is “not an accounting, but rather a payment unit.”
First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia Ksenia Yudaeva said, “We never comment on our plans regarding reserves. We always publish it after, with a time lag of six months.”
Commenting on inclusion of the yuan in the currency pool of the IMF, Yudaeva said that “now, according to the IMF methodology, all countries will report on their reserves in yuan.” “Thus, it might create additional incentives for the countries to accumulate reserves in yuan. Maybe even issue some financial instruments denominated in yuan, and so on,” she added.
Thus, it “creates opportunities,” Yudaeva noted. “But on the other hand, of course, to make the yuan more and more popular, measures from China are also needed – associated with the development of the financial market and, perhaps, some further gradual steps on liberalization of capital flows,” she said.