Commodity Online
MOSCOW : Russia’s central bank on Thursday said country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves posted their first weekly fall in six weeks, shrinking by $2.9 billion or 0.07 percent as it stopped buying dollars in currency interventions.

Russia's reserves, the world's third largest, stood at $406.6 billion on June 12 down from $409.5 billion a week earlier, central bank data showed.



The drop in reserves coincided with the Russian rouble posting its first weekly fall versus a euro-dollar basket in 2-1/2 months last Friday

That eliminated the need for the central bank to buy dollars in a bid to stem rouble appreciation, as it had done in previous weeks.

The reserves are also affected by the central bank valuing its assets and converting the worth of euro holdings into dollars to give the overall reading. But the exact mechanics of how it does the calculations are unclear, analysts say.

Officially, Russia keeps around 49 percent of its reserves dollars, 40 percent euros, 10 percent sterling and 1 percent yen. But its actual allocations can vary on any particular day due to the central bank's activity in the currency market.

Despite the weekly fall, reserves remained comfortably above the near 2-year low of $376.1 billion set in mid-March.

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