A recent report by the World Gold Council said that Egypt succeeded in increasing its gold reserves at the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) during 2022 to come in third place worldwide, following the Central Bank of Turkey and the People’s Bank of China respectively.

The CBE raised its gold reserves to 125 tonnes, with an increase of 47 tonnes in 2022, noting that the Central Bank of Egypt bought about 44 metric tonnes of gold during February 2022.

Global Central Banks played an important role in the gold market during 2022, as they were net buyers of about 673 metric tonnes of gold between the first and third quarters. The World Gold Council data also showed that central banks purchase 50 metric tonnes on a net basis in just one month, which is November 2022, that represents an increase of 47% compared with October’s 34 metric tonnes.

The value of gold in Egypt’s foreign exchange reserves increased to $7.078 billion in November 2022, up from $6.612 billion at the end of October 2022, according to the data from the Central Bank. Egypt’s CBE had previously announced that gold reserves rose to EGP 137.1 billion by the end of June 2022, compared to EGP 64.2 billion during the same period a year earlier.

According to the World Gold Council report issued for December of last year, 2022, regarding gold reserves in global central banks, Egypt ranked 34th in the world. The report added that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia came at the forefront of the Arab countries with the most gold reserves, as it has a hoard worth more than 323 tonnes, followed by Lebanon with 286.8 tonnes, Algeria in third place with 173.6 tons, and Egypt with 125.3 tons.

Earlier, the CBE announced on its official website that the value of gold listed in foreign exchange reserves increased by $248 million to $7.326 billion by the end of December, compared to $7.078 billion by the end of November 2022.