A recent FEDS Note compares international experience of using valuation gains on official reserves to finance government expenditure. Last year, the SARB and National Treasury agreed to use R150 billion of the valuation gains from the Gold and Foreign Exchange Contingency Reserve Account (representing around 30 percent of the total valuation gains in the account) between 2024 and 2027 to reduce borrowing. This represented about 2 percent of South African GDP, which is larger than most of the revaluations studied in the note. In the case of the US, the note calculates that potential proceeds from a revaluation of U.S. gold reserves would generate about 3 percent of U.S. GDP currently.
