Page 93 - RusRPTSept22

The document noted that selling yuan holdings “requires separate agreement with China, which will be very hard to get in a crisis.” It is not clear why the Kremlin would have to get the Chinese permission to sell yuan as there is no known agreement restricting Russia’s ability to buy and sell yuan on currency markets.
If other EM “soft” currencies are bought in place of yuan then they suffer from both political and devaluation risks as well as markets liquid enough to swallow billions of dollars-worth of trade. The Turkish lira in particular is very unstable after the Turkish central bank all but exhausted its own reserves defending the lira in the last year.
Another problem is that Russian banks hold a lot of these soft currencies too as they have rushed to dump their dollars, afraid that large dollar holdings will make them sanctions targets. At the same time Russia’s trading partners also hold a lot of soft currencies and are not keen to be paid in their own currencies, as they would prefer to convert their holds into hard currencies like the dollar and the euro, which continue to dominate settlements in global trade deals.
The document says yuan holdings could reach $180bn, including unspecified additional purchases made this year.
After accumulating the new friendly currencies the plan also calls for as much as $180bn equivalent to be then spent over the next three to five years on the import of technology and equipment now unavailable to Russia.
93 RUSSIA Country Report September 2022 www.intellinews.com