A Bloomberg story making the rounds this week points out that the value of Russia’s monetary gold reserves has increased by $216 billion since February 2022, offsetting much of the roughly $300 billion in Russian reserves Western countries are trying to steal.
RT takes a look inside the somewhat opaque world of Russia’s gold holdings.
What Russia’s gold reserves are – and what they are not
The headline gold reserve figure published by Russia’s central bank (CBR) does not actually include all the gold held by the Russian state. It refers to only those gold holdings that qualify as monetary gold under the IMF definition – meaning it must be held by the monetary authorities (rather than the state treasury) and must be used as a reserve asset. Regarding the latter point, under the official definition, reserves can only be deployed for balance-of-payments needs, to ensure confidence in the currency, and for safeguarding financial stability. Reserve assets are not used for funding the government.
This is an important distinction that is often overlooked when talking about a country’s reserve holdings (including gold).
Russia’s gold reserves are almost never sold (more on that below) and the CBR had long been adding to its stockpile. However, it stopped reporting gold transactions to the IMF in 2022 and now only discloses the gold stockpile, though with delays, and somewhat more opaquely.
https://www.rt.com/business/631301-gold-reserves-cbr-gosfund/