Page 77 - RusRPTJan21

Russia key trade results $bn
Indicators
January-November 2020 estimate
January-November 2019
Current account
29.1
65.7
Trade balance
80.6
150.0
Private Sector Financial Balance
47.9
27.0
Change in reserve assets *
-10.9
61.0
source: CBR
5.2.4​ Gross international reserves
Russia’s gross international reserves (GIR) fell by about $10bn in the third quarter of 2020 as the government spent some money to alleviate the pain of the coronacrisis to reach $582.7bn as of the last day of November.
That is down from a recent high of $594.4bn at the end of August when the economy was bouncing back nicely from the earlier pain after the lockdown was lifted.
One of the remarkable achievements of 2020 is the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) managed to add $28.3bn to its GIR in 2020 during the worst crisis in living memory that included oil prices being halved and falling into the 20s (and prices even briefly went negative at the start of the summer for the first time in history) and a deep devaluation of the ruble that touched RUB80 to the dollar at one point. Russia’s GIR on January 1, 2020 was $554.4bn, but close to $600bn at its peak in August and is now well above the CBR’s “comfort” level of $500bn set by CBR governor Elvira Nabiullina.
While the overall level of reserves has increased by 7.2% over the course of the year, which is not that big a change, the breakdown of the makeup of GIR shows some major policy decisions.
The first is that the level of reserves minus the gold holding has fallen by about $50bn from the peak at the start of the summer. Also the chart shows that since April last year the CBR has stopped buying gold, about the same time that the GIR reached Nabiullina’s comfort level of $500bn.
And finally that the government has barely touched the National Welfare Fund (NWF), which held $177.4bn as of November and has accumulated $53bn
77 ​RUSSIA Country Report​ January 2021 ​ ​www.intellinews.com