Uzbekistan's BoP suffers the pinch of gold, albeit with a caveat

CAUCASUS / CENTRAL ASIA - In Brief 15 Jul 2026 by Ivan Tchakarov

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The CA deficit has widened significantly on lack of gold exports. Uzbekistan had enjoyed a stream of steadily improving external accounts over 2024/2025 as the CA deficit narrowed from the peak of 8.0 percent of GDP in 1Q24 (on a 12mma basis) to the trough of only 1.9 percent of GDP in 3Q25 (Graph 1). This was chiefly driven by robust remittances. Even though these monetary inflows remained very solid, if even improving, the CA deficit widened sharply in the last two quarters (4Q25 and 1Q26) as the trade deficit more than doubled from US$3.0bn in 3Q25 to US$8.0bn in 4Q25 and US$6.8bn in 1Q26. In turn, this was driven by the the lack of gold exports as Uzbekistan made no foreign shipments in both quarters. Gold exports resumed in Apr, but again stopped in May (Graph 2).Graph 1CA widened in the last two quarters...  Source: Central Bank of Uzbekistan, Author's calculationsGraph 2...as gold exports ceasedSource: Central Bank of Uzbekistan, Author's calculationsThe decision not to export gold appears to be intentional reserve accumulation in the face of heightened global uncertainty. Such a prolonged period of no gold exports is unusual, but not unprecedented from a historical perspective, especially given that gold exports are tightly controlled by the Central Bank and tend to be very lumpy rather than continuous. Only in recent times there were two similar episodes of prolonged lack of gold exports. The first one lasted for eight consecutive months from Sep'20 to Apr'21 and the second one for seven months from Apr'22 to Oct'22. One might speculate that the CBU opted to accumulate gold in those time due to the uncertainties related to COVID and the onset of the Russia-Ukr...