Belarus’ National Bank reveals factors behind record high gold, forex reserves in 2025

As of 1 January 2026, the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves amounted to $14.4 billion. In 2025, the reserves grew by approximately $5.5 billion. “This growth was ensured by various components: about $3 billion came from the rise in the price of gold, and $2.5 billion from the increase in foreign currency assets. The key factor was the National Bank’s net purchase of foreign currency, where net sellers were the population and non-residents,” Aleksandr Yegorov explained.

In December, for the first time in the last five years, the National Bank acted as a net buyer of foreign currency. This is unusual for December, when importers traditionally purchase large amounts of currency in advance to pay for supplies from Russia ahead of the January holidays, complete investment projects, and settle import payments.

Furthermore, according to Aleksandr Yegorov, the favorable gold price environment played a role, but even without it, the reserves would have reached $11.5 billion, which is also an excellent indicator. He noted that investing in gold has been the bank’s long-term strategy since the mid-2000s, and its effectiveness is confirmed by the success of the economy.

“We cannot rely solely on rising gold prices or other external factors to increase the gold and foreign exchsnge reserves. Therefore, in our monetary policy, we proceed from the need to ensure a balanced domestic foreign exchange market. To this end, a balanced monetary policy will be pursued. It envisages a reasonable growth of lending and deposit interest rates that will remain positive in real terms, both relative to the inflation level and the population’s inflation expectations. Overall, from the perspective of controlling the money supply and the money stock, we will strive to at least maintain the achieved level of gold and foreign exchange reserves,” he shared plans for this year.