Page 97 - RusRPTApr23

The CBR used to hold several currencies as reserves but sold off all its dollars before the war. It also held significant amounts of euros, pound sterling, yen and unusually Chinese yuan, as well as significant amounts of monetary gold.
This year the CBR reports it will sell off its remaining holdings in “unfriendly” currencies and, in a radical departure from central banking norms, hold its entire reserves in yuan (60%) and gold (40%).
Russia was able to save abroad about a third of the $227bn windfall earned last year from its commodity exports, creating a potential new flashpoint as the US and its allies look to tighten their sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reports. About $80bn is scattered across holdings of cash, real estate and investments in affiliates abroad, according to a Bloomberg Economics estimate. The stash amounts to shadow reserves, a byproduct of a record current-account surplus — roughly the difference between exports and imports — that helped sustain the Kremlin’s finances since its attack on Ukraine in February 2022.
Currency assets totaled $438.683bn or 76.39% of Russian international reserves as of March 1, 2023, the Bank of Russia reports on Wednesday. Monetary gold amounted to $135.584bn and gold reserves equaled 74.9mn Troy ounces as of March 1. The Bank of Russia said earlier that country’s international reserves had edged up by 3.82% or by $22.788bn and amounted to $574.247bn in February 2023.
World central banks are aggressively buying gold.Central banks worldwide added another 31 tons of gold to their reserves in January, increasing their purchases by 16% compared to December 2022. According to the World Gold Council, Turkey bought 23 tons of gold in January, making it the biggest precious metal buyer among central banks during that period. As a result, the country's gold reserves reached 565 tons, the highest level in their entire history of observations. The People's Bank of China and the National Bank of Kazakhstan were the second and third buyers in the first month of 2023, adding 15 tons and four tons, respectively, to their reserves. Since 2022, the demand for gold has risen by 28%, primarily driven by a flight toward safer assets amid soaring inflation. Central banks' plans to invest in gold are chiefly motivated by increasing concern about a possible global financial crisis.
Russia's National Wealth Fund (NWF) saw an increase of almost RUB300bn in February, according to a report by the Russian Ministry of Finance Vedomosti reported on March 7.
As of March 1, the NWF amounted to RUB11.106 trillion, equivalent to $147.23bn or 7.4% of the projected GDP for 2023. This is an increase from the previous month's volume of RUB10.807 trillion ($155.29bn or 7.2% of GDP).
The volume of liquid assets in the NWF as of March 1 was equivalent to RUB6.446 trillion, $85.457bn, or 4.3% of GDP. The liquid part of the fund has fallen by some RUB200bn since the start of this year as the MinFin tapped as part of unusually large expenditure in January that left the budget with a very large RUB1.76 trillion deficit. That spending was reduced in February but the deficit for the first two months of this year has already reached 88% of the deficit planned for the full year.
97 RUSSIA Country Report Russia April 2023 www.intellinews.com