The finance ministry said the sovereign wealth fund was equivalent in value to 7.9% of Russia's gross domestic product (GDP), up from 7.4% a month earlier.

The NWF is a rainy-day fund built up from years of profits on oil and gas exports.

The finance ministry said it had spent 137.1 billion roubles ($1.72 billion) of yuan and gold from the NWF during March to cover the government's budget deficit.

The growth in the fund's reserves is largely due to a revaluation of state-owned lender Sberbank's shares - to 2.42 trillion roubles from 1.92 trillion roubles - and flag carrier Aeroflot's shares to 74.5 billion roubles from 66.8 billion roubles, data showed.

The fund's liquid assets amounted to 6.71 trillion roubles, or 4.5% of GDP as of the beginning of April, compared with 6.45 trillion roubles, or 4.3% of GDP a month earlier.

The finance ministry spent 2.97 trillion roubles from the NWF to cover its budget deficit in 2022.

In the first quarter, the finance ministry said exchange rate differences on foreign currency denominated assets and the revaluation of the cost of gold had added 927 billion roubles.

($1 = 79.4950 roubles)

(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya; Writing by Jake Cordell; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Mark Porter)