vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #541 / Business / Reading article...

Less than a third of Russians still trust the US dollar and choose to keep their personal savings in this type of currency.

The recent poll conducted by the newspaper’s site www.zrpress.ru showed that 28 percent of respondents prefer keeping their savings in dollars as opposed to 25 percent who chose rubles.

According to the poll results, 17.9 percent keep their savings in dollars ‘to be on the safe side,’ while 7.6 percent said they have already exchanged their currency back to rubles.

Finally, 20.5 percent admitted to never having kept their savings in dollars, the poll revealed.

According to last week’s statement by Vice President of the Central Bank of Russia Alexei Ulyukayev, over the past three months of this year a total of $5 billion were exchanged back into rubles by the country’s residents. Overall, since the beginning of 2006, residents of Russia exchanged an approximate total of $10 billion.

The main causes of this ‘dedollarization’ are the decrease in the value of the dollar and the drop in profits from currency deposits in banks, Ulyukayev said. In 2005, the value of the ruble was strengthened by 10.5 percent, the inevitable outcome of which is Russians eventually exchanging dollars for rubles.

The experts estimate that Russian residents have on their hands a total of about $50 billion of personal savings being kept in dollars, and the process of dedollarization might take several more years.

The current gradual process of dedollarization, the experts say, positively affects Russia’s economy and will add to a rising demand for the ruble, which will decrease the rate of inflation.