Commodity Online
BEIJING : China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Monday said the country’s gold reserves increased to 33.89 million ounces by the end of April.

Hu Xiaolian, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) , had disclosed earlier that China's gold reserve was 1,054 tons in April.
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In a statement issued here on Monday, SAFE said the country's gold reserve had been around 19.29 million ounces (600 tons) since December 2002. At the same time, monetary gold in China has grown from 33.724 billion to 66.984 billion yuan ($9.8 billion).

China used to adjust its gold reserve from 394 tons to 500 tons in 2001, then to 600 tons in 2003. The country has added another 454 tons to the gold reserve through gold purification and domestic trade.

Only six countries have reported over 1,000 tons of gold reserves across the world so far. China is ranked fifth in the world.

China announced in April that the country had increased its gold reserves by 454t, to 1,054t. The news has rekindled gold market hopes that China is to become a large purchaser of bullion.

The advanced economies in Europe and North America hold most of the world's official reserves of gold (20,541t out of a total of 29,602t) and that makes up a high share of their reserves (47.5%).

No other region holds more than 10% of their reserves in gold, with the Middle East next highest at 8.7%. The advanced economies have vastly more official gold than any other region, at 26.4g per capita, with the Asian 5 next on 6.3g per capita and then the Middle East at 3.6g per capita. China has just 0.8g per capita, the world 4.5g.

China purchased gold over the past six years through its State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). SAFE is quite distinct from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). The SAFE purchases meant that the gold did not appear as part of China’s officially reported monetary reserve figures.

The Chinese gold purchases, evidently, were part of a slow and steady buying program between 2003 and the present.

US leads the table as the highest holder of gold reserves in the world followed by Germany, IMF, France, Italy ,Switzerland, SPDR Gold trust and Japan.

India is in the fourteenth position with 357.7 tones of gold reserves.