Trading volumes on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange have fallen since the introduction of a new city tax on the exchange, but the MICEX rate of the ruble against the dollar will not lose its significance, bankers said Thursday.


Although the Central Bank has lobbied the Moscow government to kill the new tax, which adds a 0.1-percent surcharge to gross hard-currency trade at the MICEX as of March 1, bankers said they have come to accept it as a reality.


"All banks are trying to trade directly with each other as much as possible," said Yevgeny Rogachov, head of exchange operations at Menatep bank. He said the tax would likely be calculated at the end of the year according to bank records of trade on the exchange.


Since the tax went into effect, gross trading volume on the MICEX has remained moderate at around $50 million to $60 million despite a continuing fall in the ruble's value, which tends to attract high demand for dollars. During the ruble's last major slide in February, trading volumes reached as high as $140 million.Whether or not banks trade on the exchange, however, they will base their trades on the MICEX ruble-dollar rate, which the Central Bank uses to set its official rate, Rogachov said.


He said that about 20 of Russia's largest banks, including Menatep, buy and sell hard currency through the international Reuters trading network, where the ruble's rate against the dollar Thursday was 1,710, compared to 1,706 on the MICEX.


Sergei Monin, foreign exchange expert at International Moscow Bank, which also trades through Reuters, said that the off-exchange rate would not differ from the MICEX rate by more than six or seven points.


"It won't differ very much, because there's always the opportunity to use the exchange," he said.


In a move that could lessen the tax's burden and keep more trade on the exchange, the MICEX last week began to subtract compulsory dollar sales from the total trading volume that it reports. Russian exporters must sell half of all their hard-currency income on one of the country's six exchanges.