Russia’s Gold Reserves Scale New Highs in Growing Shift From US Dollar

• Russia’s Gold Reserves Scale New Highs in Growing Shift From US Dollar
  by Svetlana Ekimenko, https://sputniknews.com/
  Russia has been stockpiling gold bullion in recent years in an attempt to lessen its economy’s reliance on the US dollar, with forecasts showing the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves are set to outstrip those of Saudi Arabia.
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  Russia’s gold bullion stockpiles are now worth $109.5 billion, according to the latest figures from the country’s central bank, on the back of a push to steer growing international reserves away from the US dollar.
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  Data released by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) on Friday shows Russia augmented its stockpile of the precious metal by more than $7.5 billion in one month, with the share of gold in the nation’s reserves securing a new record by scaling the 20.7 percent mark from its previous 19.6 percent. While Russia’s international reserves have been making impressive gains, posting record highs not seen since February 2013. Foreign exchange reserves rose by around $9.2 billion or 1.8 percent in one month to reach $529.083 billion on 1 September.
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  Russia’s bullion holdings stood at around 2,217.68 tonnes by late July, after sweeping up another 9 tons of the precious metal in one month. Thus, since the start of the year, the country’s central bank has augmented its gold holdings by a total of 106 tonnes. Its reserves are comparable in volume to those of Italy (2,451.8 tonnes) and France (2,436.1 tonnes), according to the World Gold Council, although in those countries, the value of bullion far exceeds the value of other foreign exchange holdings.
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  According to a recent Bloomberg forecast, if the current trend of boosting international reserves persists (including foreign currencies and monetary gold among other assets), Moscow is on course to overtake Saudi Arabia as the fourth biggest holder of foreign currency reserves.
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