Gold and currency reserves add $3bn over past 3 weeks

The gold and currency reserves of the Russian Central Bank amounted to $51.4bn as of February 14, 2003. It means that they increased by $1.2bn over a week. This has been the largest one-week advance in reserves ever registered. In the period from January 24 to 31 the Central Bank's reserves added $1.1bn and in the period from January 31 to February 7 they advanced by $900m. So over the past three weeks the gold and currency reserves went up by $3.2bn, which also has been a record high growth over a 21-day period. The main reason for this fast increase in the volume of the reserves has been a massive purchase of dollars from commercial banks by the Central Bank.