{"id":420171,"date":"2026-01-18T00:51:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T00:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/420171\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T00:51:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T00:51:27","slug":"russia-to-tap-national-wealth-fund-at-record-pace-as-oil-and-gas-revenues-slump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/420171\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia to Tap National Wealth Fund at Record Pace as Oil and Gas Revenues Slump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia will sharply increase sales of foreign currency and gold from its National Wealth Fund (NWF) to offset a steep fall in oil and gas revenues, which sank<\/a> last year to their lowest level since the pandemic and halved in December year-on-year.<\/p>\n

From Jan. 16 to Feb. 5, the Finance Ministry will sell Chinese yuan and gold from the fund worth 12.8 billion rubles ($165 million) per day, or a total of 192.1 billion rubles ($2.48 billion), under the budget rule.<\/p>\n

This will be the largest daily volume of such operations on record, exceeding even the peak pace during the Covid-19 crisis, when assets were sold at roughly 11.4 billion rubles ($147 million) a day, Interfax said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The pace of disposals will rise more than twofold compared with December, when daily sales amounted to 5.6 billion rubles ($72 million).<\/p>\n

The increase is linked to a widening discount on Russian crude, said Natalia Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank.<\/p>\n

The average price of Urals oil fell to about $39 per barrel in December, well below the $59 assumed when the 2026 budget was drafted.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven current oil price dynamics, oil and gas revenues are likely to remain under pressure this year,\u201d Orlova said.<\/p>\n

The Finance Ministry has budgeted 8.9 trillion rubles ($114.8 billion) in oil and gas tax revenues for 2026.<\/p>\n

However, collections are likely to fall short by 1.1-1.4 trillion rubles ($14.2-18.1 billion), economist Dmitry Polevoy said.<\/p>\n

Analysts at MMI estimated that the gap could be even larger, at 2.5-3 trillion rubles ($32.3-38.7 billion), which would effectively drain the NWF\u2019s liquid reserves.<\/p>\n

The fund held 4.1 trillion rubles ($52.9 billion) in liquid assets \u2014 unspent funds in the form of foreign currency and gold held at the Central Bank \u2014 at the start of the year.<\/p>\n

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the NWF held $113.5 billion in liquid assets accumulated from years of oil windfalls, including 405.7 metric tons of gold.<\/p>\n

The government has sold around 60% of the fund\u2019s gold in the nearly four years since, reducing holdings to 173 metric tons as of Dec. 1, 2025.<\/p>\n

Total liquid assets have fallen to $52.3 billion, while foreign currency reserves have dropped to 209.15 billion yuan, the lowest level since the fund was created in 2008.<\/p>\n

Oil and gas revenues totaled 8.4 trillion rubles ($108.4 billion) last year, the weakest result since 2020 and about 2.5 trillion rubles ($32.3 billion) below the Finance Ministry\u2019s original projections.<\/p>\n

Budget deficit estimates from Gazprombank suggest the shortfall may have reached 6 trillion rubles ($77.4 billion), though the ministry has yet to publish final figures.<\/p>\n

For this year, the government has targeted a reduction in the deficit to 3.8 trillion rubles ($49.0 billion), or 1.6% of gross domestic product.<\/p>\n

Polevoy estimates the gap could again be larger, at around 2.6-2.7% of GDP.<\/p>\n

Lower prices for Russian oil are expected to cut export revenues by about $35 billion, weighing on economic growth and potentially forcing further spending cuts, Polevoy said.<\/p>\n

Read this story in Russian at The Moscow Times’ Russian service.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia will sharply increase sales of foreign currency and gold from its National Wealth Fund (NWF) to offset…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164,6225],"class_list":{"0":"post-420171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-finance-ministry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}