Central Bank of Russia CEO Sergei Ignatyev, on the screen, reported to the State Duma yesterday the structure of Russia’s foreign exchange assets as of November 1, 2008.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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CBR Reported About Reserves
Central Bank of Russia CEO Sergei Ignatyev reported to the State Duma yesterday the structure of Russia’s foreign exchange assets as of November 1, 2008. As it turned out, the share of dollar assets and U.S. mortgage bonds narrowed materially, while the share of euro assets went up and the CBR’s strategy is much more conservative now. Over a half of reserves loss ($97.6 billion) could be attributed to the efforts aimed at the ruble support, while the remaining decline in the foreign exchange assets happened because of the foreign exchange revaluation and because of the CBR’s spending to back up banking system.
CBR CEO Sergei Ignatyev reported to the State Duma yesterday about the structure and management of foreign exchange assets of Russia during ten months of this year.
Russia’s stockpile is narrowing. “The gold and foreign exchange reserves lowered by $97.6 billion [$484.6 billion as of November 1, 2008],” Ignatyev reported to lawmakers, specifying that $57.5 billion was spent to sustain the ruble rate of exchange, and the remaining reduction could be blamed on the revaluation resulted from dollar’s appreciation to euro and English pound and on the efforts to support banking system of Russia. VTB alone received $14 billion.
As to the reserve structure, U.S. dollars accounted for 45 percent, euro covered 44 percent, and English pounds had 10 percent as of November 1, Ignatyev said. Past year’s indicators were 51.5 percent, 38.6 percent and 9.8 percent respectively.
CBR was actively spending reserves in September and October, earning just $3 billion on them. “For all portfolios but for the Japanese yen, we had the lowering yield as of November 1. The reason is the change of interest rates in the United States and Great Britain and the change in the CBR structure in favor of placing reserves in more reliable instruments,” Ignatyev said.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 20, 2008
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