“If we use part of our reserve fund, the currency reserve fund, and transfer it into [foreign] currency and place it on the market, we would make some good money for the budget. … In today’s conditions of low oil [prices] and high percentage rates, and here we’re talking about the ruble being undervalued, then we could fully use part of the gold currency reserves already at the beginning of the year,” Siluanov said at the Gaidar Economic Forum in Moscow.
On Tuesday, the Finance Ministry announced that in 2014, the Reserve Fund grew by 72.9 percent year-on-year, topping 4.94 trillion rubles, while the National Welfare Fund increased by 51.3 percent to 4.388 trillion rubles.
The current growth of Russian sovereign funds has been largely due to the depreciation of the ruble, triggered by falling oil prices and geopolitical tensions over the conflict in Ukraine.
