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Uzbekistan’s central bank is planning to convene some of the biggest names in global asset management to discuss how to invest the country’s reserves. Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are among the firms being courted for input, a move that signals just how serious Tashkent is about professionalizing its approach to reserve management.
Uzbekistan’s international reserves have ballooned to record levels, hitting approximately $77.1 billion in March 2026.
A gold problem most countries would love to have
Roughly 83% of Uzbekistan’s reserves are parked in gold. By the end of 2025, that gold pile was worth about $55.1 billion, with total reserves clocking in at $66.3 billion, a year-on-year jump of $25.1 billion.
Most of that increase came not from savvy trading but from gold’s price surge. The metal has climbed from around $1,500 per ounce to north of $4,000 per ounce, turning Uzbekistan’s 400-plus tonnes (over 13 million troy ounces) into a golden lottery ticket.
The CBU joined the World Bank’s Reserve Advisory and Management Program, known as RAMP, around 2020. It then established a dedicated Investment Committee in 2023. And starting in 2024, the bank began purchasing US Treasuries, scaling those allocations to an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion by late 2025.
A $1.5 billion Treasury position against $77 billion in total reserves is roughly 2%.
Why Goldman and BlackRock
BlackRock committed approximately $300 million as a cornerstone investor in the Uzbek National Investment Fund IPO in 2026. That’s a separate vehicle from central bank reserves.
The CBU has articulated a reserve management philosophy built around three pillars: safety, liquidity, and profitability.
The broader economic backdrop
Uzbekistan’s current reserve levels cover roughly 12 to 20 months of imports and are several times larger than the country’s short-term external debt, comfortably exceeding IMF adequacy benchmarks.
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