An employee takes granules of 99.99 percent pure gold before packing them at the Krastsvetmet non-ferrous metals plant in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia October 24, 2016. (REUTERS PHOTO)

MINSK, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- Belarus' gold and foreign currency reserves reached 7.315 billion U.S. dollars as of Jan. 1, 2018, the country's central bank said on Friday.

In December 2017, the country's gold and foreign currency reserves fell by 1.3 percent to 98.4 million dollars after a growth in November 2017 of 18.4 million dollars (0.2 percent), the central bank said in a statement.

Over the year 2017, the increase in reserves amounted to 2.388 billion dollars, up 48.5 percent over the previous year, the central bank said.

The major factors in the growth of the gold and forex reserves in 2017 were revenues from selling government bonds nominated in foreign currency, export duties on oil and oil products, the purchase of foreign currency by the central bank, tranches of the financial loans, and an increased cost of the monetary gold, it said.

According to the country's main monetary guidelines for 2018, the volume of international reserve assets as of Jan. 1, 2019, should amount to no less than 6 billion dollars.