What you need to know about Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves?
▪️ Russia has one of the largest gold reserves in the world. The reserves are equivalent to $647.2 billion. Only China, Japan and Switzerland have more.
▪️ The total external debt of the Russian Federation (state plus commercial) is $478.2 billion. That is, hypothetically, Russia can close all external debt solely from its reserves.
▪️At the same time, the remaining reserve will still be higher than almost any EU country has today (except Germany, France and Italy)
▪️ Russian gold reserves are placed in assets denominated in different currencies and in gold. According to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation as of June 30:
- 32.3% in EUR
- 21.7% bullion gold
- 16.4% in USD
- 13.1% in Chinese Yuan
- 6.5% in GBP
- 10% in other currencies
▪️The above data does not mean that the funds are in the countries holding the currency.
▪️A certain part of the gold reserves is in Russia (at least all the gold is about $139.6 billion, or 2 times more than the gold reserves of Canada or Norway.
▪️Since 2014, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has been reducing the share of dollar assets and increasing the share of gold. At the same time, the share of funds invested in US government bonds decreased.
▪️ After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, Western countries announced the freezing of the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation under their jurisdiction. According to Finance Minister Siluanov, as a result of this decision, the country lost access to about $300 billion.
▪️Now everyone knows that his financial reserves can simply be stolen, Putin said.
▪️The amount of the reserve that remains available - about $340 billion - is still a huge amount. For clarity: the external public debt of the Russian Federation is $ 59.5 billion.