Russia’s foreign currency reserves grew in the first half of the year

BOFIT Viikkokatsaus / BOFIT Weekly Review 2016/29

The value of Russian foreign currency reserves as of end-June stood at $393 billion, an increase of nearly $25 billion from end-December 2015. Most of the growth came from exchange rate changes and banks’ repayments of forex repo contracts to the central bank. The CBR has made no direct buy or sell interventions in the forex markets since July 2015.

At the end of last year, the CBR’s foreign currency and gold reserves held about $50 billion in gold. Some 43 % of the other reserves were dollar-denominated assets, 40 % euro assets and 11 % British pound assets. The remaining 6% of assets were in other currencies e.g. Canadian dollars. The share of euro-denominated assets fell notably last year, to below the level two years ago. Conversely the share of dollar-denominated assets rose almost the same amount. Some 83 % of currency reserves was invested in sovereign bonds of other countries, mainly the US, France and Germany. As earlier, about 23 % of all investment was in high-grade (AAA) assets, and 67 % in AA-grade assets (72 % at the end of 2013). The remaining 10 % was in A-grade or ungraded assets (a little over 4 % two years ago).

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