Gross international reserves of Armenia decreased by 10% in Q1 2022

ArmInfo. Armenia's gross international reserves decreased by 10% in Q1 2022 (against an increase of 15% in the same period a year earlier) or by $307.4  million, amounting to $2.922 billion, according to the data of the  Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia.

Of these, the lion's share - $ 2.871 billion falls on external assets in hard currency, and the share of SDR in the IMF amounted to $ 51.4 million. According to the  report of the regulator, for the first quarter of this year, foreign  assets in hard currency decreased by 10.2% (against an increase of  15.3% a year earlier), and the share of SDRs in the IMF increased by  56.4% (against a decline of 67.2% a year earlier).

The y-o-y dynamics (March 2022 to March 2021) also had a downward  trend: Gross international reserves decreased by 3% or by $86.1  million, with a decline in external assets in hard currency by 5% and  a 17.4- fold significant increase in the share of SDR in the IMF. A  year earlier, in March 2021 to March 2020, the dynamics had a upward  trend: Gross international reserves increased by 16.5% or by $427.1  million, with the same growth in external assets in hard currency (by  16.5%) and an increase in the share of SDR in the IMF by 7.7 %.

At the same time, in March alone, Gross international reserves  decreased by 3% (against 5.5% in March 2021), before that, since the  beginning of the year, it had already been declining monthly. A  similar monthly downward trend was observed for external assets in  hard currency, which decreased by 3.7% in March (against a 5.5%  decline in March 2021). And the share of SDR in the IMF, after  reducing in January and February, increased significantly by 65.3% in  March (against a 33.4% decline in March 2021).

In 2021, Armenia's Gross international reserves increased by 23% or  by $599.4 million (against an 8.2% decline in 2020 and a pre-Covid  26.1% growth in 2019), reaching $3.230 billion. . In the structure of  the Gross international reserves, external assets in hard currency  increased by 22.1% to $3.197 billion, and the share of SDR in the IMF   increased significantly- 3.7-fold to $32.8 million, while in 2020  external assets in hard currency were at 8.3%- th recession, and the  share of SDRs in the IMF showed a relatively modest growth of 45.5%,  against the pre-Covid growth of the first ones by 26.2% and the  second ones by 3.2% in 2019. The share of banking gold in Armenia's  gross international reserves was set to zero in December 2003.