International reserves of Russia unexpectedly decreased by $ 6.1 billion in only one week - from June 15 to June 22. This information was published on the Bank of Russia's website in its next weekly report. At first glance, such information should not be surprising, since the gold and foreign exchange reserves have the property of both increasing and shrinking in volumes. However, the current situation raises a number of issues, primarily because of the surprisingly high rate of reduction in reserves. In this case, they are the record since December 2016. , when in one week their volume fell by as much as $ 8 billion to the minimum for three months of $ 456.3 billion. In the Central Bank itself, the current reduction in reserves is explained by their negative revaluation, due to a decrease in the value of their "gold" component, accounting for about 18% of all reserves. Experts confirm the Central Bank's assurances about the reduction in the gold reserve, hinting that this may be a temporary phenomenon. "Such a fall in gold reserves is associated with a decrease in gold prices," explained Vice-President of the Golden Mint House Alexei Vyazovsky. - Ounce of yellow metal has fallen in price by almost $ 50 - from $ 1300 to $ 1252.

Accordingly, this fall led to a revaluation of gold and foreign exchange reserves.

After all, gold in domestic gold reserves of almost 2 thousand tons - a record number over the past 30 years ". According to the expert, the current decline in the reserves of the Central Bank is a temporary phenomenon and this can be explained by several reasons. "As for the further prospects, judging by the dynamics of oil prices, the growth of gold reserves will continue," said Alexei Vyazovsky. - Then do not forget that the current drop in the price of yellow metal is temporary. In recent years, gold has been growing in price and now we are witnessing a simple technical correction that will end as soon as the geopolitical situation in the world gets aggravated ". However, according to experts, Russian reserves are reduced not only because of the "temporary" cheapening of their gold component, as evidenced by simple calculations. So, on June 1, the Bank of Russia had 62 million troy ounces of gold bullion at $ 80.9 billion. For that very notorious week the cost of noble metal collapsed from $ 1305 to $ 1265 and an ounce.

In this case, the losses of the Central Bank are almost $ 2.5 billion. As for exchange losses, during the reporting period, the euro / dollar rate fell from 1.18 to 1.16 per € 1. As of January 1, the share of Central Bank reserves placed in European currency was 21.7%, or € 78.3 billion. If we take as a basis the fact that since January this share has remained unchanged, the Central Bank's losses incurred at the exchange rate would have been only $ 1.6 billion. Given the cheapening of gold, the total loss would be $ 4.1 billion, but not $ 6.1 billion, as indicated in the report of the Central Bank. From all this, one can draw only one conclusion that during this time the Central Bank conducted an unsuccessful game against the dollar, selling it at initially unfavorable conditions. This is by no means the only error of the Central Bank, which cost the gold and currency reserves of the Russian billion. In 2017 year. from also was mistaken with forecasts of the attitude of the euro to the dollar, which turned out to be serious losses on the exchange rate difference.