Well, the long awaited moment has finally arrived and this morning, after a 6 year delay when, China finally admitted that it had been misrepresenting its gold holdings for a very long time, when it announced that its gold holdings had increased from 38.89 million to 53.31 million troy ounces, a 57% increase “in one month.”
The amounts to a new grand total of 1658 metric tons, an increase of 604 tons from the 1054 reported last in 2009 and which according to the PBOC was also the May 2015 total.
What is surprising about this release are three things:
First, while we welcome some long overdue “transparency”, the number is well below official expectations. This is what Bloomberg said previously: “The People’s Bank of China may have tripled holdings of bullion since it last updated them in April 2009, to 3,510 metric tons, says Bloomberg Intelligence, based on trade data, domestic output and China Gold Association figures. A stockpile that big would be second only to the 8,133.5 tons in the U.S.”
Second, China has finally admitted that its official gold numbers were fabricated (alongside all other official data released from the communist country) as it is impossible the PBOC could have bought 600 tons of gold in the open market in June when the price of the yellow metal actually dropped by 2%.
Third, and perhaps most important, is the reasoning behind the increase. While in April it was expected that China will be focused on SDR acceptance of the Yuan, that was subsequently refuted when it became clear that the IMF has no intention of making such a decision any time soon. So why make the disclosure?
