ASTANA, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Kazakhstan's international reserves at the end of March decreased by 11.8 percent to 27 billion U.S. dollars year-on-year, the analytical portal Finprom.kz reported Thursday.
According to financial and analytics portal Finprom.kz, there has not been such a noticeable drop since March 2013. One of the reasons for the decline in international reserves was the recent drop in the gold price.
At the same time, Kazakhstan's gold reserves went up, with 55.5 percent of Kazakhstan's international reserves being gold. The gold reserves increased by 13.8 percent year-on-year. Foreign exchange reserves decreased by 31.8 percent year-on-year.
In recent years, the Kazakhstan National Bank has actively increased the gold reserves to reduce the country's dependence on the U.S. dollar. At the end of last month, Kazakhstan has 356.3 tons of gold in its reserves, and ranked 14th worldwide.
