Russia FinMin, CBR to calm finance markets by urgent measures

MOSCOW, September 18 (Itar-Tass) - The Russian Finance Ministry and Central Bank (CBR) hope by urgent measures to calm the Russian financial markets that have been demonstrating unstoppable decline in recent days. On Thursday they are starting to take a set of measures worked out by them aimed at supporting the banking liquidity, which finally should favourably affect the stock markets.

First of all the CBR is radically - by four percentage points - lowering all legal reserve requirements for Russian banks. CBR head Sergei Ignatyev explained that this will allow them to release up to 300 billion roubles. "We hope that banks will spend these funds not on long-term crediting or other kinds of crediting of clients, but on the maintenance of the necessary volume of their liquidity and on making settlements," he said...