By Timour Azhari
DAMASCUS (Reuters) – The vault of Syria’s central bank contains nearly 26 tons of gold, the same amount at the start of the bloody civil war in 2011, even after the chaotic fall of Bashar al-Assad’s despotic regime, four people said with the situation told Reuters.
But the country has only a small amount of foreign currency reserves in cash, the same people said.
Syria’s gold reserves stood at 25.8 tons in June 2011, according to the World Gold Council, which cites the Central Bank of Syria as a data source. According to Reuters calculations, that is worth $2.2 billion at current market prices.
However, the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves amount to only about $200 million in cash, one of the sources told Reuters, while another said U.S. dollar reserves were “in the hundreds of millions.”
Although not all reserves would be held in cash, the decline is significant compared to before the war. According to the International Monetary Fund, Syria’s central bank reported $14 billion in foreign reserves at the end of 2011. In 2010, the IMF estimated Syria’s foreign reserves at $18.5 billion.
Dollar reserves are near depletion as the regime increasingly used them to finance food, fuel and Assad’s war effort, current and former Syrian officials told Reuters.
Media representatives for Syria’s new ruling government and for the Central Bank of Syria did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on 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 crushed pro-democracy protests in a 2011 crackdown that spiraled into civil war.
Syria’s new government, led by former rebels, is still taking stock of the country’s assets after Assad fled to Russia on December 8. Looters briefly gained access to parts of the central bank and took Syrian pounds, but did not hack into the main vault. Reuters reported this.
Some of what was stolen was then returned by Syria’s new rulers, Syrian officials told Reuters.
The safe is bombproof 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 last week by members of Syria’s new government, two sources said, days after rebels took control of the Syrian capital Damascus in a lightning offensive that ended more than 50 years of Assad family rule.
