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Gold reserves (or gold holdings) are held by central banks as a store of value. At the end of 2004 central banks and official organisations held 19 percent of all above ground gold as a reserve asset *.
Official reported gold reserves
As of 22 September 2005, the largest gold holdings in tonnes as reported by the World Gold Council can be seen on the table below *. The United States holding of gold is worth approximately $180.1 billion as of June 1st 2006.
1 United States 8,133.5 2 Germany 3,427.8 3 IMF 3,217.3 International Monetary Fund 4 France 2,892.6 5 Italy 2,451.8 6 Switzerland 1,290.1 7 Japan 765.2 8 Netherlands 722.4 9 ECB 719.9 European Central Bank 10 China, Mainland 600.0 11 Spain 493.3 12 Taiwan 423.3 13 Portugal 407.5 14 Russia 386.6 15 India 357.7 16 Venezuela 357.4 17 United Kingdom 311.3 18 Austria 307.5 19 Lebanon 286.8 20 Belgium 227.7 21 Philippines 187.9 22 BIS 185.3 Bank for International Settlements 23 Algeria 173.6 24 Sweden 155.4 25 Libya 143.8 26 Saudi Arabia 143.0 27 Singapore 127.4 28 South Africa 123.9 29 Turkey 116.1 30 Greece 107.9 31 Romania 104.9 32 Poland 102.9 33 Indonesia 96.5 34 Thailand 84.0 35 Australia 79.7 36 Kuwait 79.0 37 Egypt 75.6 38 Denmark 66.5 39 Pakistan 65.3 40 Kazakhstan 58.6
IMF gold reserves
IMF gold reserves refers to 3,217 tonnes of gold held by the International Monetary Fund. It is currently priced at a range of $40 and $50 a troy ounce (1.3 and 1.6 $/g), a price that was fixed in the 1970s before the Nixon government stopped pegging the U.S. dollar to the gold and instead allowed the 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. Canada, a major gold producer, is against the idea of revaluing the reserve, as it would flood the market with gold and therefore depress its price *. It is also not clear whether the gold reserve is a property of IMF or member countries.
Three quarters of the gold reserve were contributed by G5 members, namely Germany, UK, France, Japan and United States.
Investment gold reserves
In April 2006, the gold exchange-traded funds by the World Gold Council and COMEX Gold Trust by iShares held 488 tonnes of gold in total for private and institutional investors [http://www.ishares.com/fund_info/detail.jhtml;jsessionid=WLCJ4A0MKQ5MIRJUMRFRBGSFGQ0BYD50?symbol=IAU. In 2004, it was estimated that the Indian public held 13,000 tonnes of gold in jewelry or other forms *.
In 2001, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totalled 145,000 tonnes As one metric tonne equals 1,000 kilograms (or 32,150 troy ounces), this equated to a value of $3 trillion in April 2006 market capitalization for all stock markets was $43.6 trillion in March 2006 [http://www.nyse.com/Frameset.html?nyseref=http%3A//www.google.co.uk/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dglobal+stock+market+capitalization%26meta%3D%26btnG%3DGoogle+Search&displayPage=/marketinfo/1022963613722.html" target="_blank" >*.
See also
- Foreign exchange reserves
- Fort Knox Bullion Depository
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York
- Gold as an investment
- Strategic Petroleum Reserve
- United States public debt
- The "Moscow Gold", the reserves of the Bank of Spain sent to the Soviet Union for storage by the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War never to return.
"Official gold reserves"