11/02/10 Stockholm, Sweden – Perhaps the only thing more common these days than central banks increasing their gold holdings, is their ability to do it on the sly. Much like Saudi Arabia came out of nowhere to announce it more than doubled its gold reserves to 323 tonnes, Iran recently came out of the blue to announce it’s added about $15 billion worth of gold to its foreign exchange reserves.
According to Mehr News Agency:
“[Central Bank governor Mahmoud Bahmani] said that the country’s foreign currency reserve has gained several billion of dollars as a result of the rise in global gold prices. Bahmani said on October 23 that according to World Bank statistics Iran has $100 billion in foreign exchange reserves.
“Provided that the World Bank statistics are true any country with this amount of reserves would never hit a dead end, ISNA news agency quoted Bahmani as saying.
“It may be possible to exert pressure on a small country with $4-5 billion reserves, but the situation in regard to Iran is different, he said in a reference to efforts by Western countries pressure Iran financially.
“He pointed to Iran’s gold reserves and said it had multiplied several times in the past two years. Bahmani went on to say that currently gold consumption in the country is 30 tons per year and if the Central Bank doesn’t add to its gold reserves there will remain ample supplies for the next 10 years.”
Now, along with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, Iran is joining the club of surreptitious gold-hoarding nations. There appears to be ample evidence this club won’t stay too exclusive for very long. You can read more details on the story in Mehr News Agency’s coverage of how Iran now has no need to import gold for about a decade.
Best,
Rocky Vega,
The Daily Reckoning
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.
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Is this true?
By my calculations there are around 32,200 troy ounces in a metric tonne.
If Iran bought $1300 gold with $15 billion that means they purchased around 11.5 million ounces or 360 tons.
That is double what India purchased last year and almost the same amount of gold allocated for sale by the IMF.