Tajikistan intends to increase its gold-and-currency reserves, according to the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT).

Recall, the country’s gold-and-currency reserves rose 37 percent in a year to December 31, 2016, reaching 681.98 million U.S. dollars, which is equivalent to about 2.7 months of imports.

Last year, Tajikistan’s average monthly imports amounted to 252 million dollars.

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 percent in 2016.  This figure is 0.9 percent higher than the result of 2015, amounting to TJS54.5 billion in value terms (at the current exchange rate, it is about $7 billion).  As for the national currency of the republic, the somoni, it fell against the dollar by 10.8 percent in 2016.  10.3 percent 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 currency.

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.