(Reuters) - Russia's finance ministry on Wednesday said it would increase the volume of its deferred foreign currency and gold purchases in the coming six weeks.
The purchases are deferred because the central bank last week stopped buying foreign currency until the end of the year to ease pressure on financial markets as the rouble tumbled to multi-month lows.
The deferred purchases will be carried out next year, the finance ministry said, with the central bank to determine how and when a resumption will be made.
The ministry said its purchases of foreign currencies and gold for the period from Dec. 6 to Jan. 14, which includes Russia's long New Year holidays, would amount to the equivalent of 114.4 billion roubles ($1.09 billion), or 5.4 billion roubles a day.
In the previous period, between Nov. 7 and Dec. 5, the ministry had planned to buy foreign currency worth 87.5 billion roubles, or 4.2 billion roubles a day.
Since Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine have blocked Russia from using the dollar and euro, it has made FX interventions using China's yuan.
The ministry's FX interventions are carried out by the central bank, which is also conducting its own interventions: sales of yuan at the equivalent of 8.4 billion roubles a day.
Russia sells foreign currency from its rainy day National Wealth Fund under its budget rule to make up for any shortfall in revenue from oil and gas exports or makes purchases in the event of a surplus.
The central bank halted interventions in 2022 as Russia's currency markets gyrated following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and again in August 2023 as the rouble tumbled past 100 to the dollar.
Planned interventions in 2023 were deferred to 2024.
The rouble slumped to almost 115 to the dollar last week, but has steadied near 105 since then, thanks in part to the central bank's move on interventions.
($1 = 104.9000 roubles)
(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya and Alexander Marrow; Editing by Alison Williams and Bernadette Baum)
