Bank of Russia comments on operations with NWF money in domestic FX market in 2024

Starting from January 2024, the Bank of Russia will resume operations in the domestic foreign exchange market aimed at replenishing and using the resources of the National Wealth Fund (hereinafter, the NWF), including all operations with NWF money conducted in 2023. Over 2024, the daily volume and direction of Bank of Russia operations in the domestic FX market will be determined based on the balance of the following values:

• Regular fiscal rule-basedoperations to buy/ sell foreign currency in the amount of additional/ decreasing oil and gas revenues. The daily volume of the specified operations is determined and published by Russia’s Ministry of Finance on a monthly basis in line with the established procedure.
• The difference between the volume of regular fiscal rule-based operations deferred from 10 August until 31 December 2023 and the volume of NWF resources to be spent in 2023 to finance the federal budget deficit outside the fiscal rule. The daily balanced volume of purchase/ sale under the specified operations is calculated on the basis of a uniform distribution of the total amount over 12 calendar months (taking into account the number of trading days).
• The volume of net NWF investment in ruble-denominated eligible financial assets made over the period from 2023 H2 to 2024 H1. The daily volume of the specified operations in each six-month period (without a one-month forward shift, i.e. from 9 January 2024 to 30 June 2024 and from 1 July 2024 to 31 December 2024) is calculated on the basis of the uniform distribution of the total amount of the net NWF investment in the previous six months (i.e. for 2023 H2 and 2024 H1, respectively) over six calendar months (taking into account the number of trading days).

The final calculation of the total daily net amount of Bank of Russia operations in the domestic FX market in January 2024 will be presented by the regulator in a special press release at the end of December 2023, taking into account the information of Russia’s Ministry of Finance on the use of NWF resources to finance the federal budget deficit outside the fiscal-rule based operations and the NWF investment in ruble-denominated eligible financial assets.