Methodology note
July 2021

www.gold.org

Technical adjustment to our data on
Turkey's official gold holdings
The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) employs
several policy mechanisms that involve gold aimed at
supporting the banking system’s liquidity management. Thesepolicies influence the gross gold holdings reported by CBRT
and our estimation of Turkish net official holdings. We havemade technical adjustments to our Turkish gold reserves data
based on more comprehensive reports made available by theCBRT.
The adjustments include:• a more granular breakdown of grossgold reserves• greater accuracy in capturing the goldowned by the central bank

Chart 1: Gross gold reserves at the Central bank ofTurkey
Reported gold reserves broken down between central
bank and ROM holdings*Tonnes
800700• excluding any gold which does notconstitute ‘official sector’ holdings.
Turkish gold reserves and policy mechanisms
The CBRT utilises gold in more policy mechanisms thanmost other central banks. Back in October 2011, the CBRT
introduced a new policy tool, the Reserve Option
Mechanism (ROM), which enabled domestic commercialbanks to deposit gold at the central bank as part of theirreserve requirements. 1 The policy was intended to drawout some of the large stock of gold held by Turkish
households and boost its contribution to the economy. 2 But
a consequence was that gross gold reserves held at the1

www.tcmb.gov.tr/wps/wcm/connect/f31209d4-efb1-4bd1-867dc6cb1191a953/ANO201150.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE-f31209d4-efb14bd1-867d-c6cb1191a953-m3fxD5k

600
500
400
300
2001000
Oct-11

Oct-13

CBRT holdings

Oct-15Oct-17

Oct-19ROM holdings*Data as of May 2021.
Source: Central Bank of Turkey, IMF IFS, World Gold Council

2

www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-investor/gold-investor-february-2017

Chart 2: Gross gold reserves held at the CBRT
Detailed breakdown of reported gold reserves by various
categories*

Chart 3: Change in level of gold reserves due to new
methodology*
Difference in calculations since March 2017*

Tonnes800

Tonnes
700

700

600

600

500

500

400

400

300

300

200

200

100

100
0
Mar-17

Nov-17

CBRT

Jul-18TreasuryMar-19ROM

Nov-19CollateralJul-20
DepositMar-21Gold swaps

0Mar-17

Mar-18Mar-19Mar-20Mar-21

Previous CBRT gold reserves estimate
New CBRT gold reserves and Treasury gold

*Data as of May 2021.

*Data as of May 2021.

Source: Central Bank of Turkey, ICE Benchmark Administration, World GoldCouncil

Source: Central Bank of Turkey, ICE Benchmark Administration, World GoldCouncilcentral bank fluctuated according to the amount of goldcommercial banks deposited under this policy.

The new data allows us to provide greater insight into thebroader category of 'official sector' gold. 3 We can now
separate official reserves of gold owned directly by thecentral bank from gold which is owned by, for example, theTreasury. Both categories of gold are held by the centralbank and are therefore components of the amalgamatedgross reserves figure reported by the CBRT.

Since the introduction of ROM, gold reserves reported to
the IMF have included gold accumulated under ROM,
which is not directly owned by the CBRT itself. We
adjusted our data for Turkey accordingly, to ensure it wasmore comparable with the data we present for othercentral banks.
Using monthly data published by the CBRT, we deductedgold reserves related to ROM from the gross figure
reported to the IMF. The residual represented what wasowned by the central bank (Chart 1, p. 1). This allowed us
to report actual official gold reserves as accurately aspossible.
Since 2017 the CBRT has introduced further gold-related
policies, allowing domestic banks and other entities to use
gold within the financial system to manage liquidity anddemand for the metal.
But, in contrast to the transparency of ROM gold, data on
gold holdings related to these new policies was not publiclyavailable. This changed with the publication of additional
data by the CBRT.
Weekly data now available from the CBRT has allowed us
to refine our statistics for Turkey and provide more detail on
the breakdown of gold reserves at the central bank (Chart2).

3

Based on the data currently available, we are classifying 'official sector'
holdings for Turkey as those owned by either the central bank or by theTreasury.

We have adjusted our historical data series for CBRT gold
reserves accordingly. The new data allows us to remove
gold that does not constitute ‘official sector’ holdings, andto allocate official holdings more accurately between theCBRT and other official institutions (Chart 3).
While our series for total official gold holdings back to 2017has been adjusted, a meaningful difference can only beseen since early 2019 when gold swaps started to be more
widely used by commercial banks, thus impacting grossreserves reported by Turkey to the IMF. Consequently, ournew calculation of CBRT reserves primarily differ from ourprevious series by the magnitude of swaps.
We are confident that this technical adjustment to our datafor Turkey provides a more accurate measurement ofofficial sector gold holdings. You can find the revised data
within our central bank gold reserves dataset, which isupdated monthly here.

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