Russia to boost currency sales to offset energy revenue drop

Russia will almost triple the amount of foreign currency it plans to sell through early March as energy revenues plunge amid mounting restrictions on exports.

The Finance Ministry said Friday it will sell 160.2 billion rubles ($2.3 billion) during the Feb. 7-March 6 periods under a budgetary mechanism aimed at insulating the economy from the ups and downs in oil prices.

With the bulk of its international reserves frozen by US and European sanctions, the yuan is the main asset Russia can still use to conduct sales from its wealth fund to cover spending. 

For December, the government reported its holdings of the Chinese currency amounted to 310 billion yuan ($46 billion). Russia will sell the equivalent of 8.9 billion rubles in foreign currency daily through March 6, according to the Finance Ministry.

Sales may average as much as $2 billion per month for the rest of the year, according to Bloomberg Economics, which estimates that they will reduce the Russian sovereign wealth fund’s liquid assets by $21 billion from $87 billion.

Russia’s key oil-export blend is trading at deep discounts after a price cap imposed on Dec. 5 by a US-led coalition of countries that includes the Group of Seven nations over President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The group plans to extend that program to two groups of refined Russian oil products on Feb. 5, but is yet to agree to the price limits.