ArmInfo. Armenia's gross international reserves (GIR) decreased by 14.6% annually, or $615 million by September 2024, reaching $3.605 billion. A year ago they had increased by 16.5%, or $598 million. This trend shows that GIR is moving further away from the historical maximum of $4.2 billion reached in August 2023. This is evidenced by the data of the Central Bank of the Republic of Armenia.
Of these, the lion's share - $3.592 billion is attributed to external assets in foreign currency, with the share of SDR in the IMF amounting to $13.5 million. According to the regulator's report, on an annual basis (August 2024 to August 2023), external assets in foreign currency decreased by 14.8%, while the share of SDR in the IMF increased 7 times. In comparison, a year earlier saw an increase in external assets in foreign currency by 17.1% and a significant decline in the share of SDR in the IMF by 91%. During the first 8 months of 2024, GIR increased slightly by 0.1%, totaling $2.6 million. This was in contrast to the 2.6% increase of $107.8 million seen during the same period in 2023. The slight increase in GIR was due to a 0.2% decline in external assets in foreign currency, while there was a significant 27-fold increase in the share of SDR in the IMF. In the previous year, the components of GIR also showed varying trends during the first 8 months of 2023. At that time, there was a 2.7% increase in assets in foreign currency and a 69.7%. decline in the share of SDR in the IMF.
Moreover, in August 2024 alone, the GIR accelerated in growth from 1.7% to 5.7%, increasing in absolute terms by $193.7 million compared to growth of $93.8 million in August 2023. Similar dynamics were observed for external assets in foreign currencies with growth accelerating from 1.7% in July to 5.6% in August. At the same time, the share of SDR in the IMF saw a more significant acceleration in growth from 1.3% in July to 74% in August. In contrast, a year earlier, in August 2023, there was a slowdown in the growth of GIR from 5.5% to 2.3%. This was due to a slowdown in the growth of external assets in foreign currency from 4.6% to 3.4%, and a reversal of the trend in the share of SDR in the IMF from a 5.2-fold increase to a 96% decline.
It should be noted that Armenia's gross international reserves (GIR) decreased by 12.4% or $510 million in 2023, amounting to $3.602 billion. In contrast, there was an increase of 27.3% or $882 million in 2022, bringing the total to $4.112 billion. In particular, external assets in foreign currency decreased by 12.3% to $3.601 billion, with a 92% decline in the share of SDR in the IMF to $0.5 million. In 2022 there was an increase of 28.4% in the former and a decline of 81.3% in the latter. It is worth noting that in 2023, both the GIR and external assets in hard currency reached a new record high in August - $4.220 billion and $4.217 billion, respectively. The historical maximum of the SDR share in the IMF was recorded two years earlier - $178.2 million in August 2021. The share of bank gold in Armenia's GIR was reset to zero back in December 2003. Recall that in June 2024, the IMF Council, having completed the third review under the stand-by agreement (SBA) with Armenia and opened access to 18.4 million SDR (about $24.5 million) for the country, bringing the total amount to 73.6 million SDR (about $97.7 million).
