Uzbekistan’s international reserves exceed $31 billion

The Central Bank has updated the statistics of gold and foreign exchange reserves of Uzbekistan.

As of May 1, 2020, official reserves amounted to $31.2 billion. Uzbekistan’s reserves are poorly diversified, almost all of them are divided between gold ($18.5 billion) and foreign exchange reserves ($12.3 billion).

For the first time official reserves exceeded $31 billion since the Central Bank began disclosing these data (in the fall of 2017). The reserves increased mainly due to the increase in the price of gold.

The reserves are also considered to be the country’s “airbag” – they are needed as a shock-reducing factor in cases of negative external shock, and the adequacy of reserves depends directly on the nature of the shock situation.

It turned out that Uzbekistan has enough reserves to finance 16-month import. This is more than the recommended figure.

Earlier, it was reported that Uzbekistan’s international reserves exceeded $30 billion.