Russian Finance: The West has frozen nearly half of our financial reserves

On March 13th, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov announced that Western countries have frozen nearly $300 billion in Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves.

“We have total reserves of about 640 billion dollars but about 300 billions of reserves are now in a state in which we cannot use them,”Sputnik quoted Siluanov as saying during an interview on “Russia 1” channel.

Siluanov that Russia has sufficient funds to ensure the production of necessary goods and the continuation of payments .

Siluanov explained that the West is pressuring China to limit Russia’s access to its reserves of the yuan, stressing that Russia does not abandon its obligations regarding state debts, but will pay them in rubles until Western countries unfreeze its reserves of gold and foreign currencies.

European banks face losses due to the sanctions imposed on their Russian counterparts due to the impossibility of exchanging payments, in addition to the loss of profitable business and deals in Russia.

On the other hand, a source in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Government, Dmitry Chernyshenko, said: The digital service “Import Substitution Exchange” was established by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Digital Development, commissioned by the Russian government, by which direct cooperation between Russian production companies and customers will take place.

The source added that in Russia there are a sufficient number of producers who were previously unable to compete with foreign suppliers and are ready to supply the market with their products and restore supply chains that are disrupted due to sanctions, so the government issued instructions to establish this digital service.

The source stressed that the new service will reduce bureaucratic and administrative burdens on companies.

The source pointed out that the new service was launched due to the large increase in demand for local industrial products, explaining that the service was operated through the electronic trading platform of Gazprom Bank on the basis of the government’s industry information system.

O. al-Mohammad