Sechin appreciated the benefits of a timely increase in the share of gold in state reserves.

The share of gold in the reserves of the Bank of Russia is growing faster and has increased from 21% to 45% over the past four years. However, if Russia had started increasing them earlier, the country could have earned more than $400 billion. This was stated by Igor Sechin, Executive Secretary of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the Development Strategy of the Fuel and Energy Complex and Environmental Safety, head of Rosneft.

During his speech at the Energy Panel at the XXIX St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, he noted that the share of gold in the reserves of world central banks for the first time since 1996 approached 30% and exceeded the share of US Treasury bonds. The head of Rosneft explained this trend by the growth of the US government debt and budget deficit.

At the same time, due to sanctions, payment instruments are diversifying, and the payment infrastructure is being transformed with the increasing role of alternative payment systems. "Over the past five years, the volume of transactions carried out using China's Cross—Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) has more than tripled to almost one trillion yuan per day. The Hormuz crisis significantly accelerated this process," Sechin added, suggesting that the process of creating alternative systems would accelerate if the dollar continued to be used as a sanctions tool.