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Greetings, my dear viewers and this is the second part in a series of videos about gold monetization efforts in the former USSR. Today we talk about Kyrgyzstan, a small and very poor country of 6 mln in Central Asia.
Yet despite its poverty it has one of the most vibrant gold monetization programs in the world. Kyrgyzstan is a notable gold producer as this map of the country’s mines shows. As of 2019 It ranks 32 among world’s biggest gold producers according to World Gold Council (https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/historical-mine-production) with 24.2 tons of gold produced.
Kyrgyzstan holds 16.77 tons of gold in its reserves (https://tradingeconomics.com/kyrgyzstan/gold-reserves). A notable feature of the country’s currency “som” is that each unit of it is 38% backed by gold which is very high by world standards (https://goldenfront.ru/articles/view/na-skolko-som-obespechen-zolotom-i-valyutoj-otvet-vas-udivit/).
The head of Kyrgyzstan’s central bank – National bank, Tolkunbek Abdygulov, is probably the world’s most gold friendly central bank governor.
In his interview for Bloomberg in 2017 Abdygulov said that his dream is for every one of the 6 million citizens to own at least 100 grams (3.2 ounces) of the precious metal, the Central Asian country’s biggest export (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-15/currency-pioneers-build-nation-of-gold-bugs-on-ex-soviet-fringes).
Kyrgyzstan’s gold monetization program is very similar to that of Kazakhstan with the same range of weights for gold bars, but prices for larger bars are cheaper in Kyrgyzstan.
This Central Asian country is also thinking of using gold as an asset for its Retirement Foundation.
https://goldenfront.ru/articles/view/monetizaciya-zolota-v-kirgizii-obzor/