The Central Bank of the Russian Federation has laid down the purchase of gold as a prerequisite for changing international reserves; the decision to resume purchases, if accepted, will be announced additionally, said Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia Alexei Zabotkin at a press conference on Thursday.

“The change in international reserves will also be associated with the operations of the Bank of Russia on the purchase of monetary gold,” the draft guidelines for the unified state monetary policy for 2021-2023 says. At the same time, here we are not talking about the Central Bank's intention to resume the purchase of gold, but only about the premise, Zabotkin explained to journalists.

“You have to understand that this is not a forecast of the Bank of Russia, it is we are laying the premise that, in fact, extrapolates the average values of past years,” the deputy chairman said.

“As you know, we do not make any forward-looking statements on operations with gold and foreign exchange reserves. When and if a decision is made to resume gold purchases, the Bank of Russia will announce this additionally,” he stressed.

The Central Bank, which for the past several years has been the largest “consumer” of gold in the country, decided to suspend its purchase from April. Since then, the dynamics of the volume of gold in reserves has indeed averaged plus or minus 0.5 tons per month. These are insignificant changes against the background of the total volume of the “gold reserve”, which is about 2.3 thousand tons.