The Bank of Russia has begun selling physical gold from its reserves for the first time as part of operations by the Russian Ministry of Finance to fund the state budget. The regulator\u2019s press service confirmed the move to the Russian state news agency Interfax.<\/p>\n
These sales involve the gold held in the National Wealth Fund (NWF), which the Ministry of Finance has been selling in recent years. Until recently, these operations were largely virtual: the government was not selling the precious metal on the open market, but rather transferring it to the Central Bank\u2014effectively moving the gold \u201cfrom one pocket to another.\u201d As a result, the bullion remained part of Russia\u2019s official gold reserves, which exceed 2.3 thousand tonnes and are the fifth-largest in the world.<\/p>\n
The situation has now changed: the Central Bank has begun conducting real transactions involving physical gold, similar to the way it sells Chinese yuan from the NWF.<\/p>\n
Before the war, the NWF held 405.7 tonnes of gold. Since then, the Ministry of Finance has sold off 57% of that amount\u2014232.6 tonnes\u2014to cover budget shortfalls.<\/p>\n
As a result, as of November 1, 2025, the NWF\u2019s remaining gold holdings had fallen to 173.1 tonnes. The total volume of the fund\u2019s liquid assets\u2014which, in addition to gold, include Chinese yuan\u2014has decreased by 55%, dropping from $113.5 billion to $51.6 billion. Relative to GDP, the fund\u2019s unspent reserves previously stood at 7.3% of GDP before the war.<\/p>\n
Through these \u201cmirroring\u201d operations, now extended to gold as well, the Central Bank injects foreign currency into the market to control the ruble\u2019s exchange rate, analysts note.<\/p>\n
The volume of such operations, previously conducted using Chinese yuan, is estimated at around $30 billion this year and roughly $15 billion next year, according to economists.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing gold reduces the pressure on the yuan market, distributes the load across different segments, and helps maintain reserve diversification,\u201d analysts explain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":150671,"menu_order":0,"template":"","newscat":[9],"newstag":[],"issues":[],"class_list":["post-150670","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","newscat-novosti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/150670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"newscat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newscat?post=150670"},{"taxonomy":"newstag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newstag?post=150670"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=150670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}