By: Reuters

Tanzania's central bank has bought about 28 metric tons of gold over the past 18 months to bolster its international reserves and support the shilling currency, its Governor Emmanuel Tutuba said.

Tutuba was quoted in a finance ministry statement as saying the purchased gold was worth $3.68 billion at current prices.

The statement was published on Wednesday but Tutuba made the comments a day earlier at an International Monetary Fund-World Bank meeting in Gambia.

The Bank of Tanzania has been buying gold for its reserves since about 2023.

In September 2024, Tanzania's mining regulator ordered all mining firms and traders exporting gold to allocate at least 20% of the commodity for sale to the central bank.

Tanzania is one of Africa's top 10 gold producers.

Tutuba said the gold purchase programme had resulted in more than 4,000 new accounts opened at financial institutions by mineral traders and small-scale miners.

At last week's interest rate announcement, Tutuba said the East African country had around $6 billion of reserves, equivalent to 4.3 months of imports.

(Reporting by Nuzulack Dausen in Dar es Salaam and Vincent Mumo Nzilani in Nairobi. Writing by George Obulutsa. Editing by Alexander Winning and Mark Potter)