OREANDA-NEWS. December 6, 2012. The Bank of Russia and the Moscow Exchange held a seminar for bank analysts and investment companies: "Russian Money Market Today and Tomorrow. New Instruments for Interest Rate Risk Management".

Participants of the event, the representatives of the Bank of Russia and leading experts, touched upon the issues of the modern structure of the Money Market, financial instruments and indicators, the current issues and prospects of money policy, credit policy and exchange rate policy implemented by the Bank of Russia and the instruments for interest rate risk management.

The participants focused on the development of RUONIA rate to be the main indicator of the Money Market. The Moscow Exchange, in its turn, announced its plans to launch trading in the futures contract on RUONIA and OIS-swaps on RUONIA.

Andrey Dabizha, Senior manager of Treasury Department of the EBRD, remarked that interest-rate derivatives based on RUONIA are becoming more and more popular with EBRD to hedge interest-rate risks and funding.

The Bank of Russia supports the Exchange's project on launching trading in OIS-swaps on RUONIA. Trading in derivatives on the indicator which developed specifically for financial instruments of interest rate risk hedging will give an additional boost to the Russian derivatives market, which is one of priorities while establishing the International Financial Centre in Moscow.

"With regard to the current structure of the Russian Money Market, we consider that the Overnight Index Swap (OIS) on RUONIA will become its main characteristic curve which will reflect the expectations of participants for the overnight money value for the period up to one year," says Kirill Vergunov, Deputy Head of Financial Markets, Head of Domestic Market Operations at the Bank of Russia. — Development of the interest rate derivatives will help to enhance the transmission mechanism that lets the Bank's monetary policy influence the price plateau in the real economy through interest rates."

For reference:

RUONIA indicator (Ruble Overnight Index Average) was created by the Bank of Russia together with the National Currency Association in 2010 for adequate appraisal of money value on the Money Market. The calculation of RUONIA is based on the information of real transactions executed on the deposit market and it does not include any risk of subjectivity which is present while setting prices for composition of quotation-based indices.