Interessante......
Gold languishes on IMF debt deal fears - This short item by Kevin Morrison of The Financial Times appeared in Saturday's issue and there have been several other articles on the same subject recently:
Gold prices were close to five-month lows this week after it emerged that some of the International Monetary Fund's vast gold reserves might be sold to help pay third-world debt.
The proposal was endorsed by Gordon Brown, the UK chancellor, but the chances of success seem slim. The US poured cold water on the idea yesterday ahead of the weekend's Group of Seven meeting, although Germany was supportive. The US opposed a similar IMF gold sale plan in 1999.
John Reade, precious metals analyst at UBS, said any proposal to sell or revalue gold would require the approval of the US Congress. In any case, the US has a 17.4 per cent stake in the Washington-based lender - enough to block any sale, as an 85 per cent majority from the IMF is required.
Mr Reade said he doubted whether either Congress or the IMF would approve the deal. He added that countries such as Mali, Tanzania, Ghana, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia had gold mining industries that would be hurt by IMF gold sales.
Paul Merrick, vice-president of gold sales at RBC Capital Markets, said there was a better chance that the IMF would approve a revaluation of a proportion of its gold reserves of about 104m ounces, which are booked at about $82 an ounce, worth a total of $8.5bn. The market price for gold is about $415 an ounce, so 104m ounces is worth $43bn.
Mr Merrick pointed out that the IMF, the world's third-largest holder of gold behind the US and Germany, had revalued some of its holdings before to fund debt relief under the "heavily indebted poor countries" debt initiative. In 1999 and 2000, the IMF sold about 12m ounces of its gold to Brazil and Mexico at market price, which in turn was sold back to the IMF at the same price.
This left the holdings of the IMF unchanged, and the two Latin American countries were able to keep the difference between the market price and the book value to help reduce their debts. "I think we could see them do something similar to what they did with Brazil and Mexico," said Mr Merrick.
He said if the IMF were to sell 1m ounces of the gold, it would equate to a $3 fall in the bullion price. Gold prices dropped more than $11 this week to $415.20 a troy ounce on the talk of IMF sales, and have now slid about 7 per cent since hitting a 16 year high two months ago.
"In the next few days we expect more talk on this issue to keep gold on the back foot," said Mr Reade. "Consequently, we have lowered our one-month gold forecast from US$440 an ounce to $410 an ounce."
