MOSCOW, January 31 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Finance Ministry said on Thursday it had divided the Stabilization Fund, set up to accrue surplus revenue from high world oil prices, into the Reserve Fund and the National Prosperity Fund.
The Stabilization Fund held 3.852 trillion rubles ($157 billion) as of January 30.
Pyotr Kazakevich, deputy director of the ministry’s department for international financial relations, government debt and government finances, said the Stabilization Fund was transformed on January 30, when its assets were credited to the accounts of the new funds.
The Reserve Fund, designed to cushion the federal budget in the event of an oil price plunge, totaled 3.069 trillion rubles ($125 billion) just after its formation, while the National Prosperity Fund, expected to help Russia carry through pension reforms, held 783 billion rubles ($32 billion), Kazakevich said.
The ministry official said that 80% of resources in the newly created funds will be invested in government bonds of countries approved by the Russian government, 15% in the bonds of foreign government agencies and central banks, and 5% in international financial institutions.
From not too long ago:
… Some analysts have speculated that the Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska was roped in by the state to buy the country’s seventh-largest oil producer, Russneft, which is struggling under the weight of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax claims. Its former president, Mikhail Gutseriyev, was recently placed on an Interpol wanted list after fleeing the country to escape what he has called politically motivated charges against him.
The campaign against Gutseriyev and Russneft has prompted comparisons with Yukos, which was felled by more than $30 billion in back tax claims and the jailing of its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky accused Igor Sechin, Putin’s deputy chief of staff and chairman of Rosneft’s board, of orchestrating the campaign against him.
Rosneft has now gobbled up most of Yukos’s assets, growing from a middling oil concern into the country’s largest oil company mainly through its purchase of Yukos’s largest production units, Yuganskneftegaz, Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz. Absorbing those acquisitions will take up much of Rosneft’s attention as it prepares to go global and challenge the likes of Shell and BP.
Sechin must be pretty fat and happy right now. He has been agitating for exactly this for a while.
Rosneft has been like a python trying to digest a cow — its gobbling up of Yukos was funded by $23 billion in debt. Sechin has been mad about it ever since, and he saw the $157 billion in reserves as the solution to his problem. I guess he got what he wanted.
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