National Bank: Georgia’s foreign exchange reserves increased in April

Georgia's foreign exchange reserves increased by $35 million and amounted to $4.8 billion in April, the country’s National Bank said on Tuesday.

Nearly 11 percent of the total index of foreign exchange reserves, amounting to $529.4 million, comprises monetary gold. It comes after the NBG’s decision on April 9 to add monetary gold to its international reserves for the first time owing to a "record amount" of $1.5 billion purchased in the domestic foreign exchange market.

Giorgi Laliashvili, the Head of Financial Markets at National Bank, said the purchased monetary gold had been “gradually reflected” in the account. Since then the international price of gold has increased “significantly”, which contributed to the increase of the total foreign exchange reserves last month, he added.