The ruble weakened to a record for

The ruble weakened to a record for the fifth day on concern Russia will quicken its move to a free float after more than $20 billion of interventions this month failed to halt the depreciation.

The currency slid 0.6 percent to 47.7112 against the central bank’s target dollar-euro basket by 6 p.m. in Moscow, bringing this year’s decline to 19 percent. Ten-year government bond approached a five-year low before the Finance Ministry announces terms for a debt auction after scrapping sales in the past two weeks

The Bank of Russia boosted foreign-currency sales this month, with the most recent data showing it sold $2.44 billion on Oct. 24, as it sought to slow the ruble’s decline. amid a dollar shortage exacerbated by sanctions over the Ukraine conflict and dropping oil prices have exacerbated a dollar shortage. The ruble’s retreat is stoking speculation that the central bank will decide to abandon interventions as early as Oct. 31, when policy makers meet to decide on interest rates, according to Sberbank CIB.

“Price action is being increasingly driven by the fear that the central bank could scrap entirely its defense of the ruble, allowing it to freely float and find a natural level,” Tom Levinson, the chief foreign-exchange and interest-rates strategist at Sberbank CIB in Moscow, said in an e-mailed note. The intervention policy “is failing to halt the ruble’s decline, but is also feeding currency weakness by raising concern over the pace at which foreign-currency reserves are being eroded.”

The central bank should adopt a free float now as the current policy of intervening based on publicly known rules allows speculators to profit, Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told Bloomberg News today.