Syria’s central bank vault contains nearly 26 tonnes of gold, the same amount as at the start of the bloody civil war in 2011, even after the chaotic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s despotic regime, officials said told Reuters by four people familiar with the situation.
On the other hand, the country has only a small amount of foreign currency reserves in cash, these same people said.
Syria’s gold reserves stood at 25.8 tonnes as of June 2011, according to the World Gold Council, which cites the Central Bank of Syria as its data source. That’s worth $2.2 billion at current market prices, according to Reuters calculations.
The central bank’s foreign reserves, however, only amount to about $200 million in cash, one of the sources told Reuters, while another said U.S. dollar reserves stood at “several hundred million”.
Although not all reserves would be held in cash, the decline is considerable compared to the pre-war period. At the end of 2011, Syria’s central bank reported $14 billion in foreign reserves, according to the International Monetary Fund. In 2010, the IMF estimated Syria’s foreign reserves at $18.5 billion.
Dollar reserves have been nearly depleted because the regime has increasingly used them to finance food, fuel and Assad’s war effort, current and former Syrian officials told Reuters.
Media representatives of the new Syrian administration and the Central Bank of Syria did not respond to Reuters requests for comment regarding the size of the central bank’s reserves.
Syria stopped sharing financial information with the IMF, World Bank and other international organizations shortly after the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2011, in a crackdown that escalated in civil war.
Syria’s new government, led by former rebels, is still taking inventory of the country’s assets after Assad fled to Russia on Dec. 8. The looters briefly gained access to parts of the central bank, taking Syrian pounds, but did not enter the main vault, Reuters reported.
Some of the stolen goods were later returned by Syria’s new leaders, Syrian officials told Reuters.
The vault is bomb-proof and requires three keys, each held by a different person, and a combination code to open, one of the sources said.
The vault was inspected by members of Syria’s new administration last week, two sources said, days after rebels took control of the Syrian capital, Damascus, in a lightning offensive that ended more than 50 years of rule by the Assad family.
Led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that has long disavowed those links, the new administration quickly established a government and consolidated control of state institutions.
Reuters was unable to access the central bank’s coffers.
RETURN TO WORK
The central bank headquarters, a vast white building in central Damascus, fully reopened on Sunday, the first day of the working week in Syria.
It was teeming with employees and people seeking dollars, while others carried bags full of Syrian pounds.
In addition to its meager US dollar reserves, the Syrian central bank can currently count on several hundred million dollars of Syrian pounds in its reserves, according to a source.
New foreign currency inflows declined because Syria lost its main source of foreign revenue, crude oil, when Kurdish fighters and other armed groups seized deposits in the country’s east during the war. .
Syria has also been the target of tough Western sanctions and the United States has sanctioned the central bank itself and blacklisted several of its governors.
But sources familiar with the situation told Reuters that the gold was never liquidated in order to maintain sufficient collateral for the Syrian pounds circulating in the market.
Syria’s local currency depreciated from around 50 pounds to the dollar before the war to around 12,500 pounds on Monday.
Syria’s new administration has called for the lifting of international sanctions to revitalize the economy, rebuild the country after years of war and encourage the return of millions of Syrian refugees.
But U.S. and European officials said they should wait to see what kind of administration the country’s new Islamist leaders put in place.
