by Lincoln Brown
Oil Price
The Russian news agency Tass reports that the government has accessed its reserve funds for the third time this year in order to cover a shortfall in the national budget. Tass reports that this time around, the government transferred $6 billion from its reserve fund.
This latest move to tap the fund brings the amount depleted from the fund to 18 percent in August to $32.22 billion. In April and May, the Russian government pulled a total of $12 billion from the fund to cover budget deficits. In July, the International Monetary Fund stated that it expected Russia to stay in its recession due to the drop in oil prices combined with sanctions from the West over the situation in the Ukraine.