Gold reserve

For the gold mining company, see Gold Reserve (company).

World Gold Reserves from 1845 to 2013, in tonnes (also known as metric tons in the United States)

Official U.S. gold reserve since 1900

Changes in Central Bank Gold Reserves by Country 1993-2014

Changes in Central Bank Gold Reserves by Country versus time for the last 10 years

Gold reserves per capita

A gold reserve is the gold held by a national central bank, intended as a store of value and as a guarantee to redeem promises to pay depositors, note holders (e.g. paper money), or trading peers, or to secure a currency.

It has been estimated that all the gold mined by the end of 2011 totalled 171,300 tonnes. At a price of US$1,500 per troy ounce, reached on 12 April 2013, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$48.2 million. The total value of all gold ever mined would exceed US$8.2 trillion at that valuation.

However, there are varying estimates of the total amount of gold mined to date, mainly because gold has been mined for thousands of years around the world. Another reason is that some countries are not particularly open about how much gold they are mining. In addition, it is difficult to account for gold output in illegal mining activities.

Wartime relevance

During most of history, a nation's gold reserves were considered its key financial asset and a major prize of war. A typical view was expressed in a secret memorandum by the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff from October 1939, at the beginning of World War II. The British Military and the British Secret Service laid out “measures to be taken in the event of an invasion of Holland and Belgium by Germany” and presented them to the War Cabinet:

It will be for the Treasury in collaboration with the Bank of England, and the Foreign Office, to examine the possible means of getting the bullion and negotiable securities into the same place of safety. The transport of many hundreds of tons of bullion presents a difficult problem and the loading would take a long time. The ideal would of course be to have the gold transferred to this country or to the United States of America. [...] The gold reserves of Belgium and Holland amount to about £70 million and £110 million respectively. [Foot]Note: H. M. Treasury has particularly requested that this information, which is highly confidential should in no circumstances be divulged. The total weight of this bullion amounts to about 1800 tons and its evacuation would be a matter of the utmost importance would present a considerable problem if it had to be undertaken in a hurry when transport facilities were disorganized. At present this gold is believed to be stored at Brussels and The Hague respectively, neither of which is very well placed for its rapid evacuation in an emergency.

The Belgian government rushed to ship the gold to a safe place: Dakar, the capital of Senegal, then part of the French colonial empire. After the Germans occupied Belgium and France in 1940, they demanded the Belgian gold reserve back. In 1941, Vichy French officials arranged the transport of 4,944 boxes with 198 tons of gold to officials of the German Reichsbank.

IMF holdings

Since early 2011, the gold holdings of the IMF have been constant at 90.5 million troy ounces (2,814.1 metric tons).

Officially reported holdings

The IMF regularly maintains statistics of national assets as reported by various countries. These data are used by the World Gold Council to periodically rank and report the gold holdings of countries and official organizations.

On 17 July 2015, China announced that it increased its gold reserves by about 57 percent from 1,054 to 1,658 metric tons, while disclosing its official gold reserves for the first time in six years.

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. Gold leasing by central banks could place into doubt the reported gold holdings in the table below.

Top 40 according to World Gold Council's "Full year 2015" rankings

Rank	Country/Organization	Gold holdings (in tonnes)	Gold's share of forex reserves
1	United States	8,133.5	72%
2	Germany	3,381.0	66%
3	International Monetary Fund	2,814.0	N.A.
4	Italy	2,451.8	64%
5	France	2,435.6	60%
6	China	1,762.3	2%
7	Russia	1,392.9	13%
8	Switzerland	1,040.0	6%
9	Japan	765.2	2%
10	Netherlands	612.5	55%
11	India	557.7	5%
12	Turkey	515.5	16%
13	European Central Bank	504.8	24%
14	Republic of China (Taiwan)	423.6	3%
15	Portugal	382.5	67%
16	Venezuela	361.0	66%
17	Saudi Arabia	322.9	2%
18	United Kingdom	310.3	8%
19	Lebanon	286.8	20%
20	Spain	281.6	18%
21	Austria	280.0	43%
22	Belgium	227.4	32%
23	Kazakhstan	221.8	27%
24	Philippines	195.8	8%
25	Algeria	173.6	4%
26	Thailand	152.4	3%
27	Singapore	127.4	2%
28	Sweden	125.7	7%
29	South Africa	125.2	9%
30	Mexico	121.4	2%
31	Libya	116.6	5%
32	Greece	112.6	64%
33	Bank for International Settlements	108.0	N.A.
34	South Korea	104.4	1%
35	Romania	103.7	9%
36	Poland	102.9	4%
37	Iraq	89.8	5%
38	Australia	79.9	6%
39	Kuwait	79.0	9%
40	Indonesia	78.1	3%
-	Total for the Top 40	31,461.2

Private holdings

Privately Held Gold

Rank	Name	Type	Gold holdings (in tonnes)
1	SPDR Gold Shares	ETF	672.7
2	ETF Securities Gold Funds	ETF	215.2
3	COMEX Gold Trust	ETF	164.7
4	ZKB Physical Gold	ETF	138.7
5	Central Fund of Canada	CEF	52.7
6	Julius Baer Physical Gold Fund	ETF	49.1
7	Sprott Physical Gold Trust	CEF	38.6
8	BullionVault	Bailment	34.2
9	ABSA NewGold Exchange Traded Fund	ETF	26.6
10	ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares	ETF	23.4
11	Central GoldTrust	CEF	21.9
12	GoldMoney	Bailment	19.4
-	Total for the above 12		1,457.2

World holdings

World Gold Holdings (2011)
(Source: United States Geological Survey)

Location	Gold holdings (in tonnes)	Share of total world gold holdings
Total	171,300	100%
Jewellery	84,300	49.2%
Investment (bars, coins)	33,000	19.26%
Central banks	29,500	17.2%
Industrial	20,800	12.14%
Unaccounted	3,700	2.2%

See also

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York
• Gold as an investment
• Gold repatriation
• Gold reserves of Norway
• Gold standard
• List of countries by gold production
• Moscow gold, the reserves of the Bank of Spain sent to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War
• Romanian Treasure, the Romanian gold reserves sent (alongside other valuable objects) to Russia for safekeeping during World War I, but never returned
• Peak gold
• Silver as an investment
• Strategic Petroleum Reserve (United States)
• United States Bullion Depository, often known as Fort Knox
• Vaulted gold

Notes

{ gold, silver, & other precious metals & gems are weighed by the troy ounce, 12 troy ounces = 1 pound not 16 to 1 in most other normal weights, so there would be 24,000 troy ounces to a ton of weight }