Over recent quarters, Azerbaijan experienced a dramatic surge in total import statistics (often growing exponentially). Public and market analysis attributed a significant portion of this spike to gold imports by the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ), which actively expanded its physical gold holdings as a reserve strategy. In H1 2026 trade data, Azerbaijan reported $202.2 million in primary non-oil gold exports, a prominent spike alongside raw copper concentrate ($135.9M) and aluminum products ($58.9M).

However, there is a footnote in Azerbaijan's official H1 2026 trade report that most analysts skip over, and all of them should read.

Produced by the Centre for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communication, the statistics on non-oil exports come with a little footnote next to gold: "excluding monetary gold." Three little words that differentiate two very different narratives of what is taking place in Azerbaijan’s balance of payments accounts, and how the confusion between the two leads to exactly wrong conclusions. The narrative that has been doing the rounds in financial commentary, namely, that the increase in Azerbaijan’s imports is a result of SOFAZ's acquisition of gold, and that the export data is the mirror image of it, is not supported by the data. The narrative supported by the data is much more fascinating and robust: a domestic mining industry, led by Anglo Asian Mining and AzerGold, has seen a substantial increase in........

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