OREANDA-NEWS. In the first year of the "experiment" of President Vladimir Putin to reduce the share of the dollar in gold and foreign exchange reserves, Russia received about $ 7.7 billion, Bloomberg estimates show.

According to the agency, the Russian Central Bank, which began to shift into "weak" currencies like the euro and the renminbi, "missed" a 6.5% appreciation of the dollar. If the previous, predominantly dollar, structure of stocks (their total volume is $ 531 billion) had been preserved by March 2019, they would have increased by about 3.8%, Bloomberg noted. The agency explained that the Central Bank publishes data on stocks with a delay of six months, so there is no more recent data.

“This is the economic cost of solving geopolitical problems. It's hard to judge if it was worth it. There were losses this year, but this is a long-term investment”, Elina Rybakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, quotes Bloomberg.

As the agency explains, citing Goldman Sachs, as part of a de-dollarization strategy designed to reduce dependence on US sanctions, Russia has become the largest owner of reserves in RMB - about 70% of the total in the world. The share of settlements in euros in Russian exports to the European Union in annual terms increased from 32 to 42%, the agency also notes.