Over the first three months of this year, Tajikistan has exported US$85 million worth of precious and semi-precious metals and precious and semi-precious stones, according to the Agency for Statistics under the President of Tajikistan.
It is only 12 percent of the January-March last year’s level, when Tajikistan exported US$709 million worth of this product.
The share of precious metals in the overall volume of Tajikistan exports has decreased from 75 percent in January-March last year to 18 percent in January-March this year.
A significant increase in sales of precious metals abroad occurred in the spring of 2020, during the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Under conditions of restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, remittance flows have decreased that forced the country to sell part of the gold reserves to provide foreign currency to buy imported goods.
According to official statistical data, Tajikistan has exported US$1.6 billion worth of precious metals over the past two years, which is 46 percent of the country’s exports for this period.
Recall, Avesta news agency said on March 28 that according to official statistics, Tajikistan over the first two months of this year, has earned about 46 million U.S. dollars from the export of precious metals, which is 13 percent of the January-February last year’s level or 7.6 times fewer.
In January-February last year, Tajikistan reportedly earned about 353 million U.S. dollars from the sale of precious metals.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies (MoINT), 18 gold mining companies now operate in Tajikistan.
However, the ministry does not share data on actual volumes of gold production in the country, referring to the secrecy of information about the extraction of the precious metals
Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MoEDT), Tajikistan last year increased the export of precious metals by 30 percent, which amounted to 41.7 percent of the country’s export potential in 2021.
In 2021, Tajikistan reportedly exported more than 896.6 million U.S. dollars’ worth of precious and semi-precious metals.
