Belarus has imposed a 30 per cent tax on buying foreign currency and more than doubled interest rates to 50 per cent as the ripples of this week’s Russian market turmoil began to be felt in other former Soviet countries. The Belarusian central bank said the move to impose a tax on foreign currency purchases was taken “due to the increased demand for foreign currency on the domestic market”. It comes as countries around the former Soviet Union feel the fallout from the wild gyrations in the Russian rouble. In Kyrgyzstan, the central bank announced it would close down private exchange offices after a Kyrgyz som’s de facto peg to the US dollar briefly broke down on Wednesday. Armenia’s dram has fallen 17 per cent against the dollar since mid-November in a move the head of the country’s […]