Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 7
Trend:
The gross international reserves of Kazakhstan by the end of last year amounted to $31 billion, a 15.1 percent increase from 2017, Trend reports referring to energyprom.kz.
Of these, 46.5 percent ($14.4 billion) consisted of gold.
For comparison, the share of gold a year earlier stood only at 40.3 percent, while 77.5 percent was accounted for hard currency five years ago.
The state, replenishing the gold and currency reserves of the country with refined gold bars, is buying up almost all of the gold produced in Kazakhstan.
A part of the gold mined in the country is also sold to the population. From May 31, 2017 to September 1, 2018, more than 4,000 mini-ingots with a total weight of 166.9 kg were sold through second-tier banks. At the end of November, the conduction of such operations was also allowed to exchange offices.
Meanwhile, the National Bank is preparing to sell bars weighing 12–13 kg, open for purchase to individuals and legal entities.
Ingots can also be sold on the global market. The National Bank is ready to sell them to commercial trading partners from 2019, but in a limited volume of no more than 5 tons.
The volume of gold reserves in Kazakhstan is 341.2 tons (15th in the world) - almost 50 tons more than by the end of 2017, and 83 tons than by the end of 2016.
Three refinery plants are currently operating in Kazakhstan: the Tau-Ken Altyn in capital Astana, the plant in Oskemen (Ust-Kamenogorsk) owned by LLP Kazzinc, and the enterprise in Balkhash owned by the Kazakhmys corporation.
Tau-Ken Altyn LLP is a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Mining Company Tau-Ken Samruk, which, in turn, is a subsidiary of the National Welfare Fund “Samruk Kazyna” JSC. The main shareholders of LLP Kazzinc are Switzerland’s Glencore International concern (about 70 percent of the shares) and Tau-Ken Samruk (about 30 percent of the shares).
