Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, left, attends the meeting at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Moscow, August 18, 2008.
Photo: Sergey Mikheev
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The Record Decline
The war in South Ossetia was the key reason of sizeable decline in Russia’s foreign reserves. The week’s losses equalled $16.4 billion.
According to the experts, the war in South Ossetia was one of the reasons of record decline in foreign reserves, which shed $16.4 billion August 8-15, Interfax reported.
The gross outflow of capital in time of the military clashes in South Ossetia reached $7 billion. Some $6 billion flew out August 8 and $1 billion left the country August 11, Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin announced earlier.
The second reason of reserves’ decline was the euro depreciation to the U.S. dollar. Roughly a half of Russia’s foreign reserves are denominated in dollars, while euro accounts for around 40 percent.
Given the CBR statistics starting from the collapse of August 1998, today’s decline in reserves could be compared only with their losses in time of early settlement of Paris Club debt that happened in August of 2006. At that time, Russia paid $22.3 billion, narrowing the reserves by $16.5 billion August 18-25.
www.kommersant.com
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