These are special drawing rights.
States intend to block Russia's access to some foreign exchange reserves – in the form of special borrowing rights. A draft law banning transactions with this Russian asset was approved by the US House of Representatives (lower house) on Wednesday, according to the US legislature's website.
It will be recalled that special drawing rights (SDRs, the “currency” of the International Monetary Fund) are an international reserve asset created by the IMF in 1969 and complement the official reserves of its member states, according to the fund's website. The value of the SDR is based on a basket of five currencies – the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese yuan, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Countries can exchange SDRs with each other and also exchange them for currencies, reminds the US Congress.
The document adopted by the House of Representatives prohibits the US Treasury Department from any SDR exchange transactions held by Russia or Belarus.
< p>The US Treasury is ordered to “persistently agitate” IMF member countries to introduce the same ban. The US IMF should also oppose the distribution of the SDR in favor of Russia or Belarus. Ukraine “(in the second case, the ban on the Ministry of Finance to exchange SDRs with these countries will be lifted a month after the US president reports to Congress on the fulfillment of this condition.)
Russia, according to the latest data, as of February 1 2022), has reserves in special drawing rights of $ 24.085 billion in equivalent. In particular, in August 2021, Russia received from the International Monetary Fund $ 17.5 billion in SDRs in the anti-crisis distribution of the fund.
Read also: Russia's frozen reserves in EU banks should be transferred to the reconstruction of Ukraine – Borrel
Earlier it was reported that Russia is preparing lawsuits over the freezing of its international reserves abroad.
