Official gold reserves
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Gold reserves (or gold holdings) are held by central banks as a store of value. In 2001, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 145,000 tonnes.[1] One tonne of gold equated to a value of US$30.27 million as of February 14, 2009 ($941.35/troy ounces)[2]. The total value of all gold ever mined would be US$4.39 trillion at that price.[note 1]
At the end of 2004, central banks and official organizations held 19% of all above-ground gold as a reserve asset.[3] About one percent of all above-ground gold (370 metric tonnes) was mined in the first five years of the California Gold Rush.[4]
[edit] IMF gold reserves
IMF gold reserves refers to 3,217 tonnes of gold held by the International Monetary Fund. It is currently priced at $42 a troy ounce ($1,370/kg) for accounting purposes, a price that was fixed in 1971 just before the Nixon administration officially delinked the U.S. dollar from gold and instead allowed market forces to set the dollar's worth. An attempt to revalue the gold reserve to today's value has met resistance for different reasons. For example, Canada is against the idea of revaluing the reserve, as it may be a prelude to selling the gold on the open market and therefore depressing its price.[5] It is also not clear whether the gold reserve is the property of the IMF or of member countries.
[edit] Privately held gold
As of September 2008, gold exchange-traded funds held 1,039 tonnes of gold in total for private and institutional investors.
[edit] Officially reported gold reserves
The largest gold holdings in tonnes as reported by the World Gold Council[6] (derived from numbers reported to the International Monetary Fund[7]) can be seen in the table below, per 22 September 2005 and 14 December 2007, ranked by their 2005 holdings. Although the United States has the largest reserves of individual countries, in total the eurozone gold holdings are greater (11,065 tonnes as of December 2007).
| World official gold holding (September 2008)[6] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Country/Organization | Gold (tonnes) |
Gold's share of total forex reserves (%)[6] |
| 1 |  United States |
8,133.5 | 76.5% |
| 2 |  Germany |
3,412.6 | 64.4% |
| 3 | International Monetary Fund | 3,217.3 | - |
| 4 |  France |
2,508.8 | 58.7% |
| 5 |  Italy |
2,451.8 | 61.9% |
| 6 |  Switzerland |
1,040.1 | 23.8% |
| - | SPDR Gold Trust (a Gold exchange-traded fund) | 1,024[8] | - |
| 7 |  Japan |
765.2 | 1.9% |
| 8 |  Netherlands |
621.4 | 57.8% |
| 9 |  People's Republic of China |
600.0 | 0.9% |
| 10 | European Central Bank | 533.6 | 20.1% |
| 11 |  Russia |
495.9 | 2.2% |
| 12 |  Republic of China (Taiwan) |
422.4 | 3.6% |
| 13 |  Portugal |
382.5 | 85.9% |
| 14 |  India |
357.7 | 3.0% |
| 15 |  Venezuela |
356.4 | 23.4% |
| 16 |  United Kingdom |
310.3 | 14.5% |
| 17 |  Lebanon |
286.8 | 28.4% |
| 18 |  Spain |
281.6 | 37.0% |
| 19 |  Austria |
280.0 | 41.9% |
| 20 |  Belgium |
227.6 | 42.2% |
| 21 |  Algeria |
173.6 | 3.4% |
| 22 |  Libya |
143.8 | 4.2% |
| 23 |  Sweden |
143.2 | 11.7% |
| 24 |  Saudi Arabia |
143.0 | 10.0% |
| 25 |  Philippines |
133.1 | 9.9% |
| 26 |  Singapore |
127.4 | 1.9% |
| 27 | Bank for International Settlements | 125.0 | - |
| 28 |  South Africa |
124.3 | 9.6% |
| 29 |  Turkey |
116.0 | 3.9% |
| 30 |  Greece |
104.6 | 87.6% |
| 31 |  Romania |
103.7 | 6.6% |
| 32 |  Poland |
102.9 | 3.3% |
| 33 |  Thailand |
84.0 | 2.2% |
| 34 |  Australia |
79.8 | 6.1% |
| 35 |  Kuwait |
79.0 | 13.4% |
| 36 |  Egypt |
75.6 | 5.8% |
| 37 |  Indonesia |
73.1 | 3.3% |
| 38 |  Kazakhstan |
73.0 | 9.4% |
| - | iShares Gold Trust (a Gold exchange-traded fund) | 66.9 [9] | - |
| 39 |  Denmark |
66.5 | 5.1% |
| 40 |  Pakistan |
65.3 | 16.0% |
| 41 |  Argentina |
54.7 | 3.1% |
| 42 |  Finland |
49.1 | 15.7% |
| 43 |  Bulgaria |
39.6 | 5.1% |
| 44 | West African Economic and Monetary Union | 36.5 | 9.0% |
| 45 |  Malaysia |
36.4 | 0.8% |
| 46 |  Slovakia |
35.1 | 4.8% |
| 47 |  Peru |
34.7 | 2.6% |
| 48 |  Brazil |
33.6 | 0.4% |
| - | Central Fund of Canada (Closed End Mutual Fund - (AMEX:CEF)) | 30.2[10] | - |
| 49 |  Bolivia |
28.3 | 10.3% |
| 50 |  Ecuador |
26.3 | 11.6% |
| 51 |  Ukraine |
26.2 | 2.0% |
| 52 |  Syria |
25.9 | - |
| 53 |  Morocco |
22.0 | 2.2% |
| 54 |  Nigeria |
21.4 | 0.9% |
| 55 |  Belarus |
20.3 | 11.6% |
| - | BullionVault | 15.0[11] | - |
| 56 |  Jordan |
14.8 | 5.2% |
| 57 |  South Korea |
14.3 | 0.1% |
| 58 |  Cyprus |
13.9 | 29.7% |
| 59 |  Czech Republic |
13.2 | 0.9% |
| 60 |  Netherlands Antilles |
13.1 | 31.4% |
| 61 |  Cambodia |
12.4 | 12.9% |
| 62 |  Qatar |
12.4 | 2.6% |
| 63 |  Serbia |
12.2 | 2.3% |
| 64 |  Laos |
8.1 | 23.1% |
| 65 |  Latvia |
7.7 | 3.3% |
| 66 |  El Salvador |
7.3 | 8.2% |
| 67 | Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa | 7.1 | - |
| 68 |  Guatemala |
6.9 | 3.9% |
| 69 |  Colombia |
6.9 | 0.8% |
| 70 |  Macedonia |
6.8 | 7.6% |
| 71 |  Tunisia |
6.8 | 2.1% |
| 72 |  Lithuania |
5.8 | 2.3% |
| 73 |  Ireland |
5.5 | 16.3% |
| 74 |  Sri Lanka |
5.3 | 3.8% |
| 75 |  Mongolia |
5.2 | 10.9% |
| 76 |  Bahrain |
4.7 | - |
| 77 |  Bangladesh |
3.5 | 1.6% |
| 78 |  Mexico |
3.4 | 0.1% |
| 79 |  Canada |
3.4 | 0.2% |
| 80 |  Slovenia |
3.2 | 7.2% |
| 81 |  Aruba |
3.1 | 17.1% |
| 82 |  Hungary |
3.1 | 0.3% |
| 83 |  Mozambique |
3.0 | 4.6% |
| 84 |  Kyrgyzstan |
2.6 | 5.3% |
| 85 |  Luxembourg |
2.3 | 10.8% |
| 86 |  Albania |
2.2 | 2.6% |
| 87 |  Hong Kong |
2.1 | 0.0% |
| 88 |  Iceland |
2.0 | 1.9% |
| 89 |  Tajikistan |
2.0 | - |
| 90 |  Papua New Guinea |
2.0 | 2.1% |
| 91 |  Mauritius |
1.9 | 2.4% |
| 92 |  Trinidad and Tobago |
1.9 | 0.6% |
| 93 |  Yemen |
1.6 | 0.5% |
| 94 |  Suriname |
1.4 | 7.0% |
| 95 |  Cameroon |
0.9 | - |
| 96 |  Honduras |
0.7 | 0.7% |
| 97 |  Paraguay |
0.7 | 0.6% |
| 98 |  Dominican Republic |
0.6 | 0.7% |
| 99 |  Gabon |
0.4 | - |
| 100 |  Republic of the Congo |
0.3 | - |
| 101 |  Chad |
0.3 | - |
| 102 |  Central African Republic |
0.3 | - |
| 103 |  Uruguay |
0.3 | 0.1% |
| 104 |  Estonia |
0.2 | 0.1% |
| 105 |  Chile |
0.2 | 0.0% |
| 106 |  Malta |
0.2 | 0.8% |
| 107 |  Costa Rica |
0.1 | 0.0% |
[edit] See also
- Foreign exchange reserves
- Sovereign wealth fund
- United States Bullion Depository
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York
- Gold as an investment
- Strategic Petroleum Reserve
- The "Moscow gold", the reserves of the Bank of Spain sent to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War.
[edit] Notes
- ^ The valuation of a tonne of gold is calculated from the market price of a troy ounce: 32150.75 oz (troy) ≈ 1 tonne.
[edit] References
- ^ gold knowledge/frequently asked questions World Gold Council
- ^ Futures - Yahoo! Finance
- ^ Central Banks and Official Institutions World Gold Council
- ^ http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/ghayes/goldrush.htm Mining History and Geology of the Mother Lode]
- ^ Gold falls on IMF sale concerns
- ^ a b c Reserve asset statistics
- ^ International Reserves -- individual reporting countries are broken out
- ^ Bar list from SPDR Gold Shares web site
- ^ from http://us.ishares.com/product_info/fund/overview/IAU.htm, as of May, 2009
- ^ http://www.centralfund.com/Nav%20Form.htm
- ^ Daily Audit - Allocated Gold Bar Lists And Bank Statements - BullionVault.com
