Aleksandar Vučić, although a lawyer by training with the position of the president of the state, likes to play the role of an economist, and especially a governor National Bank of Serbia.
While the whole of December this institution spent defending the dinar due to people's panic, which Vučić himself provoked with statements approx situation with NIS, the president announced the current financial situation in foreign exchange reserves:
"Let me give you an official figure. We have twenty-nine billion and 367 million euros in foreign exchange reserves plus 52,5 tons of gold, historically the highest reserves, which is somewhere around 6,3 billion in euros. So, we have 36 billion euros in foreign exchange reserves. We can defend the exchange rate for years, so that it is not known what is happening."
Still, according to the latest NBS data, gross foreign exchange reserves at the end of November 2025 were at the level of 29,4 billion euros.
"Gross foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank of Serbia at the end of November 2025 reached the highest level observed at the end of the month. Compared to the end of October, they increased by 2,5 million euros," the NBS report also states.
This figure also includes all the gold that the NBS holds, i.e. the mentioned 52,5 tons of gold, he confirmed for the New Economy economist Saša Đogović. So it remains a question mark where the president got the information about 36 billion euros, and the National Bank of Serbia did not answer New Economy's questions on this topic.
Laypeople often get counted.
There is a possibility that the president mixed up the numbers, so he actually added gold reserves of 6,3 billion euros to the total foreign exchange reserves, which include the value of gold of 29,4 billion euros.
From the end of November and the whole of December, the NBS invested substantial funds from foreign exchange state reserves in order to artificially strengthen the dinar. This can be seen in the fact that only in November the state intervened more and sold many more euros than in previous months. In November, the sale of 210 million euros was contracted, in order to "protect" the dinar, but 45 million of that was concluded only in the last two days of the month and will be settled in December.
The only question is what the data will be for December, if it is known that the usual NBS intervention is around 75 million euros.
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