Tajikistan intends to increase its gold-and-currency reserves, according to the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT).
The country’s gold-and-currency reserves rose by 37% YoY by December 31, 2016, reaching $681.98 million, which was an equivalent of about 2.7 months of imports.
Last year, Tajikistan’s average monthly imports amounted to $252 million.
As of January 1, 2016 the volume of the country’s gold-and-currency reserves amounted to just over $486.6 million.
According to Tajik central bank, the country’s economic growth was 6.9% in 2016, up by 0.9% YoY, amounting to TJS54.5 billion in value terms (about $7 billion). As for the national currency of the republic, the somoni, it fell against the dollar by 10.8% in 2016. 10.3% of the annual decline occurred in January 2016.
Foreign-exchange reserves is money or other assets held by a central bank or other monetary authority so that it can pay if need be its liabilities, such as the currency issued by the central bank, as well as the various bank reserves deposited with the central bank by the government and other financial institutions. Reserves are held in one or more reserve currencies.
As most countries engage in international trade, reserves would be important to assure that trade would not be interrupted in the event of a stop of the inflow of foreign exchange to the country, what could happen during a financial crisis, for example. A rule of thumb usually followed by central banks is to at least hold an amount of foreign currency equivalent to three months of imports. (New.tj/Business World Magazine)
