Official gold reserves

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Gold reserves (or gold holdings) are held by central banks as a store of value. In 2006, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 158,000 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$4.78 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]

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.

Privately held gold

As of October 2009, gold exchange-traded funds held 1,750 tonnes of gold in total for private and institutional investors.^[6]

Officially reported gold reserves

The largest gold holdings in tonnes as reported by the World Gold Council^[7] (derived from numbers reported to the International Monetary Fund^[8]) 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). The Eurozone numbers in the following table are a double count as they are also included under the individual countries. Additionally, the gold listed for each of the countries in the table may not be physically stored in the country listed, as central banks generally have not allowed independent audits of their reserves.

World official gold holding (March 2009)[7]
Rank	Country/Organization	Gold (tonnes)	Gold's share of total forex reserves (%)[7]
1	Eurozone	10,856.9	5%
2	United States	8,133.5	78.9%
3	Germany	3,412.6	71.5%
4	International Monetary Fund	3,217.3	-
5	France	2,487.1	72.6%
6	Italy	2,451.8	66.5%
-	SPDR Gold Trust (a Gold exchange-traded fund)	1,104[9]	-
7	People's Republic of China	1,054.0[10]	0.9%
8	Switzerland	1,040.1	41.1%
9	Japan	765.2	2.2%
10	Netherlands	612.5	61.7%
11	European Central Bank	536.9	23.7%
12	Russia	523.7	4.0%
13	Republic of China (Taiwan)	423.6	4.2%
14	Spain	416.8	42.5%
15	Portugal	382.5	90.2%
16	Venezuela	363.9	35.5%
17	India	357.7	4.2%
18	United Kingdom	310.3	18.7%
19	Lebanon	286.8	30.0%
20	Austria	280.0	50.5%
21	Belgium	227.5	42.5%
22	Algeria	173.6	3.6%
23	Philippines	153.9	12.3%
24	Libya	143.8	4.5%
25	Saudi Arabia	143.0	12.4%
26	Sweden	135.9	14.2%
27	Singapore	127.4	2.2%
28	Bank for International Settlements	125.0	-
29	South Africa	124.7	11.0%
30	Turkey	116.1	4.7%
31	Greece	112.5	92.8%
32	Romania	103.7	8.4%
33	Poland	102.9	5.0%
34	Thailand	87.4	2.2%
35	Australia	79.8	7.3%
36	Kuwait	79.0	11.9%
37	Egypt	75.6	6.4%
38	Indonesia	73.1	4.3%
39	Kazakhstan	72.0	11.6%
-	iShares Gold Trust (a Gold exchange-traded fund)	66.9 [11]	-
40	Denmark	66.5	4.7%
41	Pakistan	65.4	20.3%
42	Argentina	54.7	3.4%
43	Finland	49.1	17.6%
44	Bulgaria	39.9	7.6%
45	West African Economic and Monetary Union	36.5	11.8%
46	Malaysia	36.4	1.2%
47	Slovakia	35.1	81.6%
48	Peru	34.7	3.3%
49	Brazil	33.6	0.5%
-	Central Fund of Canada (Closed End Mutual Fund - (AMEX:CEF))	30.2[12]	-
50	Bolivia	28.3	10.3%
51	Ecuador	26.3	11.6%
52	Ukraine	26.2	2.0%
53	Syria	25.9	-
54	Morocco	22.0	2.2%
55	Nigeria	21.4	0.9%
56	Belarus	20.3	11.6%
-	BullionVault	18.0[13]	-
57	Jordan	14.8	5.2%
58	South Korea	14.3	0.1%
59	Cyprus	13.9	29.7%
60	Czech Republic	13.2	0.9%
61	Netherlands Antilles	13.1	31.4%
62	Cambodia	12.4	12.9%
63	Qatar	12.4	2.6%
64	Serbia	12.2	2.3%
65	Laos	8.1	23.1%
66	Latvia	7.7	3.3%
67	El Salvador	7.3	8.2%
68	Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa	7.1	-
69	Guatemala	6.9	3.9%
70	Colombia	6.9	0.8%
71	Macedonia	6.8	7.6%
72	Tunisia	6.8	2.1%
73	Lithuania	5.8	2.3%
74	Ireland	5.5	16.3%
75	Sri Lanka	5.3	3.8%
76	Mongolia	5.2	10.9%
77	Bahrain	4.7	-
78	Bangladesh	3.5	1.6%
79	Mexico	3.4	0.1%
80	Canada	3.4	0.2%
81	Slovenia	3.2	7.2%
82	Aruba	3.1	17.1%
83	Hungary	3.1	0.3%
84	Mozambique	3.0	4.6%
85	Kyrgyzstan	2.6	5.3%
86	Luxembourg	2.3	10.8%
87	Albania	2.2	2.6%
88	Hong Kong	2.1	0.0%
89	Iceland	2.0	1.9%
90	Tajikistan	2.0	-
91	Papua New Guinea	2.0	2.1%
92	Mauritius	1.9	2.4%
93	Trinidad and Tobago	1.9	0.6%
94	Yemen	1.6	0.5%
95	Suriname	1.4	7.0%
96	Cameroon	0.9	-
97	Honduras	0.7	0.7%
98	Paraguay	0.7	0.6%
99	Dominican Republic	0.6	0.7%
100	Gabon	0.4	-
101	Republic of the Congo	0.3	-
102	Chad	0.3	-
103	Central African Republic	0.3	-
104	Uruguay	0.3	0.1%
105	Estonia	0.2	0.1%
106	Chile	0.2	0.0%
107	Malta	0.2	0.8%
108	Costa Rica	0.1	0.0%

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.

Notes

1. ^ The valuation of a tonne of gold is calculated from the market price of a troy ounce: 32150.75 oz (troy) ? 1 tonne.

References