ArmInfo.Armenia's gross international reserves increased by 6.8% in H1 2022 (against 19% growth a year earlier) or by $220.7 million, reaching a historic maximum of $3.451 billion, according to the data of the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia.
The lion's share of these, 3.420 billion dollars, falls to external assets in foreign currency, and the share of SDRs in the IMF amounted to 28.2 million dollars. According to the report of the regulator, foreign assets in hard currency increased by 7%, and the share of SDR in the IMF decreased by 14% for H1 2022, while a year earlier in the same period, these components increased by 18.9% and 53.5%, respectively.
The y-o-y dynamics (June 2022 to June 2021) was also upward: gross international reserves increased by 10.8% or by $336.8 million, due to the growth of external assets in hard currency by 10.3%, with a 2.1-fold increase in the share of SDR in the IMF. As a comparison, we note that a year earlier, in June 2021 compared to June 2020, there was a higher growth in gross international reserves by 17.6% due to an increase in external assets in hard currency by 19.4%, and the share of SDR in the IMF then was in decline by 73%. In Q2 2022, there is an improvement in the dynamics of gross international reserves to 17.4% growth (from 9% decline in the Q1) due to the same reversal of the trend of external assets in hard currency - to 18.4% growth (from 9. 6% decline in Q1), while the share of SDR in the IMF, on the contrary, reversed from 56.4% growth towards a 45% decline. A year earlier, for Q2 2021, a slowdown in the growth of gross international reserves was recorded from 15% to 3.2% due to the same change in the upward dynamics of external assets in hard currency from 15.3% to 2.8% (from 15.3% in Q1) , and the share of SDRs in the IMF, on the contrary, registered 4.5-multifold increase, recovering from the decline by 67.2%.
And in June 2022 alone, gross international reserves accelerated growth from 2.7% to 3.5%. Similar dynamics was observed in foreign assets in hard currency as well: growth accelerated from 2.8% in May to 4.3% in June. At the same time, the share of SDRs in the IMF for the reporting month sharply accelerated the decline from 6.3% in May to 61.4% in June. A year earlier, in June 2021, there was also an acceleration in the growth of gross international reserves - from 0.6% to 3.2%, due to the same acceleration in the growth of external assets in hard currency - from 0.7% to 4%, and the share of SDR in the IMF, having delayed in recession, sharply accelerated the pace from 8.3% to 62.8%.
In 2021, Armenia's gross international reserves (GIR) 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 terms 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 registered a 3.7- multifold increase to $32.8 million, while in 2020 external assets in hard currency were at 8.3% recession, and the share of SDR in the IMF showed a relatively modest growth of 45.5%, against the pre-Covid growth in 2019 of the of the gross international reserves by 26.2% and of the SDR in the IMF by 3.2%. The share of banking gold in Armenia's gross international reserves was set to zero in December 2003.
