SerpApi.Org
In June, the Russian Central Bank’s gold reserves fell by another 300,000 troy ounces, or 9.33 metric tons, bringing the decline since the start of the year to 1.4 million ounces, or 43.5 tons.
“The sell-off was the largest in at least the past quarter-century, the entire period covered by World Gold Council statistics,” the report said. “According to the data, the Central Bank carried out a sale of comparable scale only once, in 2002. During the six-month period from January through June that year, Russia’s gold reserves fell by 36.1 tons.”
The Central Bank may have raised about $5.6 billion from the gold sales, with the money used to help balance the federal budget, Freedom Global analyst Vladimir Chernov said.
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Chernov said the Russian regulator has been conducting transactions involving precious metals on the domestic market since last fall, mirroring similar transactions by the Finance Ministry involving assets from the National Wealth Fund.
“When oil and gas revenues fall below the level stipulated by the fiscal rule, or when fund assets are directed toward domestic investment, the Bank of Russia conducts offsetting transactions involving liquid reserve assets,” he said. “In this case, the Central Bank performs the technical part of the mechanism rather than making a separate decision to cover the budget deficit by selling gold.”
Chernov said most of the gold was likely sold to Russian banks through exchange-traded and over-the-counter markets.
“The Central Bank began selling gold because it does not want to burn through all of its remaining yuan reserves,” Russian economists previously said. “The yuan is the last currency available to the Central Bank for market operations and for influencing the ruble exchange rate.”
The Central Bank stopped publishing details on the composition of its reserves after it was sanctioned and about $300 billion of its assets in the West were frozen. According to the latest available data, the bank held about $100 billion in Chinese yuan, although that amount may have declined since then, the report said.
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As previously reported, the liquid assets of Russia’s National Wealth Fund have fallen by three and a half times during the war against Ukraine, while oil and gas revenues have nearly halved.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov previously warned that the combined budget deficit of Russia’s regions, which hit a record high in 2025, would increase by another 400 billion rubles this year to 1.9 trillion rubles.
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Section: Business
Author: Альона Сонько
