Central Bank reserves drop

The gold and currency reserves of the Russian Central Bank amounted to $62.7bn on August 29, 2003. So, they dropped by $300m compared to the previous week. In the period from August 15 to 22, the reserves lost $1.7bn, which means that they decreased by $2bn over the past two weeks.

This has been the fastest pace of the drop in gold and currency reserves during 10 working days since the financial crisis in August 1998. At that time the Central Bank had to sell its reserves to support the ruble. This time, the decrease in the reserves is attributed to large payments on Russia's foreign debts. As a result, the current level of gold and currency reserves is equal to the volume registered about three month ago.

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