Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — The Central Bank of Uzbekistan intends to continue diversifying its international reserves by asset class, currency and counterparty, Central Bank chairman Timur Ishmetov said on 18 September at the first International Forum on Sovereign Asset Management in Tashkent.
The forum is attended by 77 delegates from 35 organisations, including asset management companies, central banks, state institutions, international financial organisations and bodies involved in developing international standards.
According to Ishmetov, the combined volume of assets under the management of the companies represented exceeds US$36 trillion, while central banks and state institutions control official reserves of roughly US$3.4 trillion.
Uzbekistan's international reserves exceeded US$72 billion as of 1 September. The Central Bank head noted that this volume is sufficient to cover more than a year of imports.
In the first half of 2026, the Central Bank increased its gold reserves by around 50 tonnes. Ishmetov, citing World Gold Council data, noted that this was the second-largest increase among the world's central banks by volume.
"Two features distinguish our balance sheet. We are a gold-producing country, and gold has long made up a significant share of our reserves. In addition, by international standards we are a relatively young reserve manager," the Central Bank chairman said.
The Central Bank of Uzbekistan joined the World Bank's Reserve Advisory and Management Partnership (RAMP) programme in 2020. In 2024, the regulator purchased US Treasury bonds for the first time. Ishmetov described this as an important step in diversifying the reserve portfolio.
According to him, the Central Bank continues cooperation with the World Bank on international reserve management issues.
In forming its management system, the regulator was guided by three principles — safety, liquidity and profitability, in that order.
"We built this system consciously and without trying to cut the path short, guided by three well-known principles: safety, liquidity and profitability — in that order," Ishmetov noted.
The Central Bank chairman emphasised that for effective reserve management, not only the structure of the portfolio but also the regulator's own institutional capabilities matter.
"A portfolio can be restructured in a week. An institution cannot," he said.
Ishmetov named the further expansion of the reserve structure as the next stage. In particular, this concerns diversification by asset class, currency and counterparty.
"Our direction of movement is further diversification: by asset class, by currency, by counterparty. And we do not intend to make these decisions relying only on our own judgments," the Central Bank head said.
He named transferring part of the assets to external management as one possible direction. According to Ishmetov, such an approach would allow the Central Bank's portfolio managers to work directly on international markets alongside leading specialists and then use the experience gained within the organisation.
The Central Bank chairman devoted a separate part of his speech to the changing role of gold and the dollar in the structure of world reserves.
Ishmetov cited the latest World Gold Council survey. According to the data he presented, 89% of central banks expect world gold reserves to grow, and 45% plan to increase their own gold reserves. At the same time, three-quarters of survey participants expect the dollar's share of world reserves to decline over the next five years.
According to the Central Bank head, by the end of 2025 the value of gold in central banks' reserves exceeded the value of the US Treasury bonds they held.
"The growing role of gold reflects its attractiveness as a long-term store of value, a portfolio diversification instrument and an asset that does not carry the credit risk of a sovereign issuer," Ishmetov said.
At the same time, changes in world markets, according to him, do not make reserve managers' tasks any simpler.
"Changing conditions do not give simpler answers. They make the questions themselves more significant," the Central Bank chairman noted.
Among the key questions for the regulator, Ishmetov highlighted the permissible level of concentration of a sovereign balance sheet in a single asset, ways of building genuine reserve resilience and approaches to strategic asset allocation amid changing interrelations between markets.
"We have views on all three questions. But there are no final answers to any of them. I prefer to say this at the start of the forum rather than pretend at its end that we have such answers," the Central Bank head said.
