For Russia, the risks of increasing sanctions threats from the United States remain very significant.
The PolitNavigator correspondent reports that Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov stated this in an interview with Izvestia, explaining his intention to radically change the structure of the National Welfare Fund.
“Indeed, we have decided to withdraw the funds of the National Welfare Fund from dollar assets. Today, about 35% of the National Welfare Fund was invested in US bonds and other types of American securities. Obviously, the situation in relations between Russia and the United States is not simple, we really see a constant increase in sanctions threats, and we are recording clear sanctions trends. Moreover, no matter how much we would like, the situation is not returning to normal, unfortunately. The dollar has become a political currency,” Siluanov said.
He says that restrictions are being imposed on Russian entrepreneurs and the country as a whole, which lead to the fact that payments in dollars become more complicated; sanctions were recently introduced against the initial placement of Russian government debt.
“The decision to transfer the National Welfare Fund’s investments to other assets was made to protect our reserves. We agreed that we will give priority to those instruments that guarantee the stability of the National Welfare Fund. Investments in gold in the long term always tend to have positive capitalization. In addition, we are increasing investments in the yuan and slightly increasing the share of the euro. The new structure, in our opinion, is more resistant to external economic changes and much less sensitive to the influence of political factors,” the minister noted.
The publication's interlocutor believes that the Russian decision will not affect the US financial market.
“Investments in dollar assets amounted to about $40 billion. For the United States this is an insignificant amount, but for us it is significant. We believe that reserves should be outside of politics, which is why the decision was made to shift to other, more reliable assets,” Siluanov emphasized.
At the same time, he did not rule out that the share of the yuan in Russian investments will increase in the future.