The Central Bank of Russia has published data on adequacy of the country's international reserves as of January 1, 2017.
For the record, in January 2016 the Bank of Russia released for the first time new data in order to broaden the scope of information for the purpose of analyzing resistance of the country's economy to external risks. Along with international reserves adequacy ratios, to cover separate kinds of risks the summary includes a composite indicator proposed by the International Monetary Fund to assess an aggregate of the risks associated with EM markets.
During the three-month period (October 1, 2016 – January 1, 2017) Russia's reserve needs for risk coverage increased, while the reserves themselves decreased, CBR data show.
The amount of reserves sufficient to fund three-month imports rose from the specified $65.6 bln to $66.5 bln, while the amount of reserves enough to fund external debt payments over the next twelve months (the Guidotti criterion) grew from $132.6 bln to $133.8 bln. In the upshot, the value of the Reddy criterion (the sum of the above two indicators rose $2 bln from the specified $198.3 bln to $200.3 bln).
In turn, international reserves which are sufficient to fund 20% of the obligations that are part of broad money grew from the specified $156.9 bln to $167.8 bln, or by $10.9 bln.
The IMF's composite metric (ARA EM), the calculation formula of which is given in the Bank of Russia's methodological comments and is the amount of international reserves sufficient to fund an outflow of funds if an aggregate of the risks materializes, totaled $195.8 bln as of January 1, 2017 vs. the specified $185.6 bln three months later, i.e. rose $10.2 bln on the quarter.
In the meantime, in the reporting period Russia's actual international reserves decreased by $20 bln from $397.7 bln as of October 1, 2016 to $377.7 bln.
That said, the difference between actual reserves and reserve needs for risk compensation (in accordance with the IMF composite metric) narrowed in 4Q 2016 to $181.9 bln as of January 1, 2017 vs. $212.1 bln (in accordance with the specified data) as of the start of the three-month period.
Notably, as of January 1, 2016 the difference between the above indicators equaled $197.2 bln (with $368.4 bln falling to the reserves, and the IMF composite metric standing at $171.2 bln), i.e. overall last year the situation surrounding adequacy of Russia's international reserves deteriorated somewhat.
