All about gold and foreign exchange reserves in Russia and the world. Current status of gold and foreign currency reserves at the beginning of 2021

Which countries can boast of their gold reserves - read on

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: newsweek.com

In 2021, the amount of gold purchased by central banks rose to its highest level in 50 years. This trend has continued this year.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Gold Council have collected information on countries' gold reserves as of early April 2021. Business Insider has selected the 10 countries with the largest gold reserves.

India

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: businesstimes.com.sg

Official gold reserve: 608.7 tons

Share of precious metals in the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves: 6,4%

As global economic growth slows, emerging economies are looking to increase their reserves of the precious metal. Since August 2021, India has seen a continuous increase in gold reserves.

China

• Tons: 1948.3
• Percentage of gold and foreign exchange reserves: 3.4%

In the summer of 2015, for the first time since 2009, the People's Bank of China began sharing gold purchasing activity on a monthly basis. Although China has the sixth-largest foreign exchange reserves, the yellow metal makes up only a small portion of its total reserves, just 3.4%.

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Since December 2021, China has purchased almost 100 tons of gold.

Netherlands

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: rbc.ru

Official gold reserve: 612.5 tons

Share of precious metals in the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves: 65, 9%

Recently, the Dutch authorities have been trying to return their gold reserves to the country. In 2014, the Dutch Central Bank said that the return of some of its assets from the United States would have a positive impact on public confidence.

Leading countries in gold production

Today, there are five countries that dominate gold mining. The leading gold producing countries are China, South Africa, Peru, Australia, and the USA.

China

Topping the list is China, which has been the world's largest gold producer since 2007. The volume of precious metal production increased over the annual period by 5.89% and amounted to 380.23 tons. Mines are being actively developed not only in our country, but also abroad.

China has been the leader in gold mining for 7 years.

Australia is in second place. 330 tons of precious metal per year.

If we talk about the Australian gold reserve, it is mainly concentrated in the protrusions of the Precambrian basement. There are also large deposits in the cities of Western Australia and small ones throughout almost the entire continent. Also, Australia produces the largest gold coin in the world, weighing 1 ton.

The third place of honor belongs to Russia - 295 tons

Active gold mining and export abroad continues in 2021.

The fourth place belongs to the USA. 200 tons of gold per year

Gold is mined from 18 large and 32 small mines, where it is mined with non-ferrous metals. Most of them are located in Nevada. The largest and oldest mine in the country is the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. Over 100 years, more than 1000 tons of gold were mined there. The keen interest in the yellow metal has recently contributed to the intensification of geological exploration. As a result, a number of new gold deposits were discovered.

Gold reserves place the United States in first place in the world.

Peru – 130 tons per year

Peru is a country with an agrarian economic structure with a developed manufacturing and mining industry. The country is rich in natural resources: copper, gold, silver, phosphates, oil, gas, coal, iron ore.

However, it should be noted that this “five” is often subject to change, since the gold production indicators of different countries are subject to change.

Japan

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: ibtimes.com

Official gold reserve: 765.2 tons

Share of precious metals in gold and foreign exchange reserves: 2,5%

Japan's share of global foreign exchange reserves rose to 5.2% in 2021, its highest in 15 years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Russia

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: sputniknews.com

Official gold reserve: 2150.5 tons

Share of precious metals in the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves: 19,1%

Russian authorities are also purchasing gold as they seek to reduce dependence on American assets. Its reserves have quadrupled over the past ten years, according to Bloomberg.

Yellow Metal Vaults

Where is US gold stored? Depositories include the American Mint in Denver, where 1,400 tons of precious metal are stored, the West Point money yard, where 1,700 tons are believed to be stored, the Federal Reserve Bank's underground vaults several floors deep in Manhattan with 400 tons of bullion, and finally, the top-secret mysterious facility Fort -Knox, which allegedly stores 4603 tons of metal, i.e. most of the American gold supply. Fort Knox bullion is referred to as “gold bins,” and bullion deposited in other depositories is referred to in business filings as “other Treasury gold.”

The famous Fort Knox, named after the first Secretary of War Henry Knox, is located in the US state of Kentucky and is an impregnable fortress with a huge moat, where military security boats constantly cruise.

The building, which today belongs to the American army, was first built of granite and then covered with concrete for durability. Watchtowers are located at each corner of the site, surrounded by several rows of 5,000-volt barbed wire. Modern surveillance systems complement the security of the territory and monitor every meter of it. Even next to the 44,000 hectare site on which the building is located, parking is prohibited.

The entrance door to this depository, made of reinforced steel, weighs more than 20 tons and can withstand a bomb explosion or a direct hit from a shell. The clever system of the lock code involves dividing it into parts among several employees. Thus, each of them has only part of the cipher, and in order to open the door, all code keepers must take turns typing a combination of signs and symbols known only to them. The interior of the gray prison-like building is a bunker consisting of separate sections, each of which can be filled with poisonous gas or water at the right time.

The defense is completed by an autonomous life support system designed in case of attack, which includes various food supplies, water and electricity supplies. None of the ordinary citizens can get inside, literally only a few representatives of the legislative branch, and of the American presidents only Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were here.

France

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: oklanding.me

Official gold reserve: 2436 tons

Share of precious metals in the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves: 61,1%

In 2021, Reuters reported that the Bank of France had begun working to improve the state of its gold reserves. This will help France achieve new successes in international trade.

In retrospect

The FSBI TsNIGRI specialist took 1974 as the starting point. Until 1993, there was a systematic increase in reserves, in all categories: ABC1 and C2. At the same time, production volumes either remained at the same level or decreased. But then an interesting movement began: until 2004, balance reserves decreased, while production began to grow in 1998.

“We saw a series of spikes in the 2000s where inventory levels increased significantly. This is connected with the exploration and evaluation of our giant deposits: Natalkinskoye, Sukhoi Log, Olimpiadinskoye. And I want to draw your attention to the situation of the last four years: our reserves are not increasing: stagnation has begun, in fact, we put on our balance sheet the same amount as we produce. This was not the case in previous years; we constantly expanded our SMEs. And production volumes, I want to replace, are growing,” Anatoly Ivanov commented on the situation.

This situation is typical for gold deposits themselves, which are the engine of industry development, as well as complex gold-bearing objects. As for alluvial deposits, there has been a decline in SMEs for almost two decades. And if earlier it was possible to talk about a decrease in production volumes, then in the last 10 years they began to grow again, but the situation with SMEs has not changed.

Italy

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: telegraph.co.uk

Official gold reserve: 2451.8 tons

Share of precious metals in the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves: 66,9%

The future of Italy's gold reserves is in doubt due to the growing popularity of the Five Star Movement political party, which is characterized by populism and Euroscepticism. Previously, Rome proposed transferring official ownership of gold reserves to the public. At the moment this right belongs to the Bank of Italy.

Where is the main US gold depository located?

About half of the US gold reserves (4,110 tons) are stored at the military base at Fort Knox, Kentucky. This powerful fortified structure is capable of withstanding attacks by an entire army and a nuclear explosion. Therefore, attackers never attempted to storm the most reliable storage facility in the world.

The second part of the strategic foreign exchange reserves (about 7,000 tons) is stored at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Here, under the protection of ultra-reliable safes, gold bars from different countries that have entrusted their national wealth to America are stored. This is where the daring criminals broke in in the legendary action movie Die Hard 3.

The ultra-modern bunker is located 24 meters underground and 15 meters below sea level. However, experts say storing so much wealth in climatically and geophysically fragile Manhattan is hardly justified. An interesting fact is that the current storage facility is an open tourist site, which is visited annually by thousands of curious travelers from different countries.

Germany

TOP 10 countries with the largest gold reserves. Photo: news.yahoo.com

Official gold reserve: 3369.7 tons

Share of precious metals in the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves: 70,6%

In 2021, Germany managed to recover billions of dollars worth of its gold reserves from France and the United States. In this way, the German Central Bank is also trying to regain public confidence.

International reserves of countries

January 2021

X countries

* including gold deposits and gold swaps.

Gold mining in countries around the world.