NEW DELHI (Commodity Online): With the governments still in hunt for ways to come out of the recession blues, Central banks all over the world refused to part ways with their gold reserves in the past quarter.

According to a World Gold Council data, even as the total volume of gold held by central banks remained almost constant, their value as a percentage of total assets held marginally declined in most of the cases.

As per WGC, the US and Germany with 8,133.5 and 3,408.3 tonnes of reserves are the countries with the highest amount of gold reserves in the world. China, the world’s largest gold producer, apparently slowed its gold accumulation spree. It holds 1,054 tonnes of gold, which is just 1.8 per cent of its total reserves.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar were shown having 12.3 and 2.3 per cent of their reserves in gold. The figure stood at 12.4 per cent and 3.7 per cent respectively for the two hydrocarbon rich countries in March 2009.

While Germany was a prominent disposer of gold in the last quarter, France the other major European economy accumulated gold in the last quarter. The two European nations recently recorded an above-zero spike in growth rate. While Germany disposed 4.3 tonnes of gold in the last quarter, France amassed 5.6 tonnes of the yellow metal.

WGC CEO Aram Shishmanian earlier said the GCC central banks are looking forward to improving their gold reserves.

The bullion has seesawed between $900 an ounce and $1,020 this year having touched the upper mark recently. The yellow metal traded at about $991.70 an ounce yesterday. It is expected to find support at $975 an ounce before commencing an upward journey again.