Russia now fourth largest forex reserve holder

The country’s holdings, including those frozen by Western sanctions, have surpassed $540 billion

Russia has risen to fourth place among the world’s largest economies in terms of foreign exchange reserves, RIA Novosti calculations published on Saturday show.

In the first nine months of the year, Russia’s holdings, including those frozen by the West due to Ukraine-related sanctions, rose to $540 billion, Central Bank data shows.

This allowed Russia to displace India, which had occupied fourth place since last summer. India’s holdings as of the end of September amounted to $532 billion. The two countries have been competing with each other on this indicator since 2015.

China retained its perennial leadership in terms of international reserves, with a staggering $3.193 trillion in assets at the end of September this year. Second place was held by Japan with $1.238 trillion, and Switzerland came in third with $892 billion in assets.

According to the report, an interesting trend was seen in the lower half of the top ten, in which emerging economies outpaced their developed-market counterparts. Hong Kong was displaced by Saudi Arabia as the sixth largest holder, Brazil moved up to ninth place, pushing Singapore down to tenth. South Korea dropped to number seven.

Germany and the US retained the 11th and 12th spots from last year respectively, with France moving up to 13th, followed by Italy. Mexico moved up three spots to number 15. Thailand, the UK, Israel, Poland, and the Czech Republic rounded out the top 20.

READ MORE: Russia boosts forex reserves

The study was conducted by RIA Novosti based on data from the central banks of the 90 largest economies in the world as of 2021. The final sample included the 50 economies with the largest reserves, which disclosed their data for September in mid-November.

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