Page 94 - RusRPTMar23

5.2.4 Gross international reserves
The volume of international (gold and foreign exchange) reserves of the Russian Federation in January 2023 increased by $15.046bn, or 2.6%, to $597.035bn from $581.989bn,according to the CBR.
Russia entered the top four countries in the world in terms of gold and foreign exchange reserves with a total of $582bn in 2022. These are the results of the analysis of data from national central banks, Izvestia writes The top three are: China ($3.31 trillion), Japan ($1.27 trillion) and Switzerland ($924bn). Rounding out the top five is India ($563bn), sixth is Saudi Arabia ($460bn), which overtook Hong Kong ($424bn) and South Korea ($424bn) last year. The significance of the total size of Russia's international reserves is now significantly lower than last year, since about half of them (the Central Bank of the Russian Federation gave a figure of about $300bn) are blocked due to Western sanctions.
The liquid portion of the National Wealth Fund (NWF) is estimated at the moment at around RUB6 trillion ($84.7bn), Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on February 6.
The Finance Ministry plans to eliminate the euro in Russia’s National Wealth Fund this year to leave only the Chinese yuan, the ruble and gold, Deputy Minister Vladimir Kolychev told reporters on February 9. “If there is a question whether the euro would be zeroed, it will definitely be zeroed this year,” he said, adding that the ministry would gradually reform the fund’s structure to fit the new regulations. At the end of 2022, the ministry published a new regulatory structure of the National Wealth Fund’s assets, which eliminated the possibility of investing in the US dollar and set the maximum share of the yuan at 60% and of gold at 40%, raising the shares from 30% and 20%, respectively. As of February 1, the National Wealth Fund’s accounts with the central bank comprised 10.465bn euros, 307.446bn yuan, 530.1mn rubles, and 551.278 tonnes of gold.
There were record withdrawals from Russia’s National Welfare Fund (NWF) in December leading experts at Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) to say it will be run down this year.
Russia spent more than RUB2.4 trillion (or $35.1bn) of its sovereign wealth fund’s assets to (partially) finance a record-high deficit of RUB3.9 trillion in the final month of the year according to the Ministry of Finance. This brings total withdrawals from the NWF, for budgetary support and assistance to struggling companies, to RUB3.7 trillion for 2022—or roughly 2.6% of GDP.
NWF drops by RUB3.2 trillion. Since the start of the war, Russia has lost around quarter of the fund’s total assets in ruble terms, which now stand at RUB10.4 trillion ($148.4bn or 7.8% of GDP).
Importantly, a significant share of the remaining holdings are not liquid and, thus, cannot easily be used for further fiscal support. At the end of 2022, liquid assets accounted for only 6.1 trillion (4.6% of GDP).
94 RUSSIA Country Report March 2023 www.intellinews.com