Iran spoke about tangible blow of Russia on the “powerful” dollar

American securities are becoming less and less popular for Russia as a mechanism for strengthening its gold and foreign exchange reserves.

According to the Iranian edition “Javan”, referring to the official statistics of the US Treasury Department, in November and December 2020, the Central Bank of Russia continued to rapidly reduce investments in US Treasury bonds. As a result, the share of such securities in the gold and foreign exchange reserves of Russia fell to 19.2%. In parallel with this, the Russian regulator is increasing the share of other assets, in particular, precious metals.

The US Treasury releases statistics four times a year. The latest such bulletin showed that the share of the Russian contribution to US government bonds fell below $5 billion over the past quarter. In total, Russia invested $1.5 billion in long-term US bonds in 2020. The Russian share in short-term bonds was $3.4 billion.

Russia began the process of reducing investments in the American public debt in 2017, although until then it was one of the largest holders of US bonds. Moscow had to change its policy against the backdrop of the aggressive anti-Russian policy of the American authorities. When it became clear that the Donald Trump administration did not intend to improve relations, Russia embarked on a course of de-dollarization.