At the beginning of December last year, the Bank of Russia held $198.1 billion worth of gold bars in its vaults, while a year later, the figure had risen to $310.7 billion.
This is all due to the rally in the gold market: over the past 12 months, the price of the metal has increased by about 60%, to $4,300 from $2,600 per troy ounce.
At the same time, in physical terms, Russia's gold reserves, on the contrary, have decreased slightly. According to the latest available data, they stood at 2,326.5 tonnes, while exactly one year ago they were 6 tonnes higher.
The share of gold in Russian reserves at the beginning of December was 42.3%. At the same time, the foreign currency portion of Russia's international assets has grown by only 1.3% over the past year, reaching $423.9 billion.