Russia to maintain foreign exchange reserve structure

Russia does not expect the eurozone to disintegrate despite its sovereign debt crisis and will keep its international reserves structure unchanged, Russian Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on Thursday. “The stress tests which we conduct reveal more realistic scenarios, for example, a European recession or a considerable fall in the currency (euro) rate, but do not expect a collapse of the eurozone or a waiver of the euro as a quite sustainable currency,” he said. Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev disclosed last summer that the central bank held 47 percent of its international reserves in U.S. dollars, 41 percent in euros, nine percent in British pounds, two percent in the Japanese yen and one percent in Canadian dollars. Ulyukayev said the low liquidity of other world currencies discouraged the central bank from changing the structure of its international reserves. “We are not going to seriously change (the structure of reserves) as it is quite convenient. We would like to continue work to diversify our foreign exchange portfolio but there are natural restrictions – the low liquidity of the markets of other currencies,” he said. Russia’s international reserves stood at $498.6 billion as of January 1, 2012.