190.2 trillion spent on foreign currency

Residents of Russia spent nearly 190.2 trillion rubles, or 21% of the total income, on buying foreign currency for the period from January to July of 1997. One year ago the amount spent on purchasing foreign currency by the population of this country to

<BR>Residents of Russia spent nearly 190.2 trillion rubles, or 21% of the total income, on buying foreign currency for the period from January to July of 1997. One year ago the amount spent on purchasing foreign currency by the population of this country totaled 16.7% of the total income. This information was released by the Committee of Statistics. For the first 7 months of this year, the income of the population of Russia totaled 907.8 trillion rubles and the overall expenses totaled 879.9 trillion rubles. This year, from the overall volume of income the Russian population spent 613.7 trillion rubles (67.6%) on buying goods or services, 49.5 trillion rubles (5.4%) on paying taxes and other fees, and 26.5 trillion (2.9%) went to savings in bank accounts or purchasing bonds. The remaining 190.2 trillion rubles (21%) went to buying foreign currency. The difference between the increase in income versus expenditures totaled 27.9 trillion rubles (3.1% of overall income). By August 1, 1997 the savings of the population had grown to 260.4 trillion verses 260.4 trillion of the previous month and 215.3 trillion in the beginning of this year. <BR>