Monday, April 16, 2012

Where is Australia's Gold?

19th Century Gold scales in the RBA Museum, Sydney.
I would like to pose a few questions to my blog readers on the subject of Australia's Central Bank's Gold Reserves. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Australia's gold reserves are approx. 80 tonnes, worth according to the RBA $4,103,000,000 as of the end of March 2012. Source

But where is the Gold kept?

Is it held in the basement of the RBA headquarters at 65 Martin Place Sydney?

Or is all the gold held offshore? and if so where?

In July 1997 then RBA governor Ian Macfarlane and then treasurer Peter Costello sold 167 tonnes, reducing Australia's gold reserves to just 80 tonnes (ie 68% of the gold reserves were sold). Read blog post on this subject here.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the 1997 sale was of gold that was "already held overseas". Does this mean the remaining 80 tonnes was also held overseas at the time? Is it still overseas?

From the ABS: 

Source 

Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, Jun 1997

"The gold holdings demonetised in June 1997 to meet the RBA's delivery commitments were already held overseas. Therefore non-monetary gold does not cross the Australian customs frontier and there is no entry in ABS international merchandise trade statistics (recorded trade basis) for these exports. Change of ownership adjustments are therefore required to the recorded exports data in the June quarter, and again in the September quarter 1997 for this publication and in the June, August and September 1997 issues of International Trade in Goods and Services, Australia" 

I would welcome any insights that my followers may have in the comments section of this post. 

3 comments:

  1. I had no idea you could comment on your posts. I have been reading your posts at www.abcbullion.com.au rather than ausbullion.blogspot.com.au and you can't see any comments at the www.abcbullion.com.au site. Do you think you could change that? I wanted to post numerous times over the past months but never know I could.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, yes you can comment on any of the posts on this blog at ausbullion.blogspot.com or gold88blog.com (they are the same site). This blog is no longer being fed to the abcbullion.com.au website due to a site upgrade.

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  2. Thanks for the info. Maybe they took the menu link away for the blog at the abcbullion.com.au website but I have been going to this direct link which still works and has your latest posts:

    http://www.abcbullion.com.au/index.php/default/gregblog/31

    I would suspect many people still go there. I have seen other websites link to there too. You might want to ask the abcbullion.com.au people to put a redirect in for the above URL to go you your actual blog site? Anyway thanks again. I appreciate your posts.

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