ODESSA – Russia's sliding ruble may be furrowing brows in the capitals of Moscow's former satellites but at least in this wheeling, dealing Black Sea port it is business as usual.
After Russia effectively devalued the rouble on Monday, economists have muttered warnings about the risk to currencies of neighbouring states like Ukraine, for whom Russia acoounts for 40 percent of foreign trade.
But for Olena, on vacation from her job as a bookkeeper at a sunflower oil plant in Chernivtsi at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, such worries are out of place.
'The situation seems fine for now,' she said, breaking off from window shopping in an Acacia-lined street in old Odessa with her two small daughters.
The financial storm in Moscow threatening Ukraine's hrvynia currency seemed a long way off to many of the traders sweating in the hot afternoon sun at the bustling Privoz market.
'I haven't really thought about it,' shrugged Olha, propping her elbows on the stand where her imported Polish dress shoes were displayed. 'We just live from day to day.'
Living from day to day is how many denizens of this gently crumbling city of wrought iron balconies tangled in vines would describe life here.
A once booming industrial centre and grain loading port, many factories are barely working and wages are miserly if they are paid at all.
For this market – like hundreds more throughout the former Soviet Union awash in imported washing powder and T-shirts from Turkey, Poland and China – the sudden drop in buying power which devaluation would bring would hit hard. 'Of course I'm worried, everybody is,' said one trader.
The memory of early post-independence days, when notes of the previous currency, the karbovanets, were recycled into toilet paper, has receded for some.
Down by the Odessa Sea Port passenger terminal, gleaming from a $30 million makeover, the mood was carefree as holidaymakers strolled the observation decks and hung over railings to gaze at distantly anchored ships waiting to enter port.
But, while danger seemed a long way from the blue waters of the harbour, ruffled for now by nothing more threatening than a summer afternoon breeze, port manager Valentina Golub said problems loomed.
While the port has little direct commercial contact with Russia, Golub said, profits would suffer through any losses incurred by handlers of Russian goods.
And devaluation of the hryvna, were it to occur, would hit the port's contracts which have been concluded up to the end of the year.
'Devaluation in a neighbouring country is never very nice,' Golub said drily.
'We are counting on the government's promises to stick to its hryvna policy to the end of the year.'
