RBI buys 200 mt gold from IMF to pump up reserves' value

4 Nov 2009, 0137 hrs IST, ET Bureau

MUMBAI: The purchase of 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the Reserve Bank of India will not just diversify the country’s foreign exchange reserves but also boost of the value of the reserves.

On Tuesday, RBI announced that it had concluded the purchase of 200 metric tonne of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under the Fund’s limited gold sales programme. The central bank said that it was an official sector off-market transaction and was executed over a two-week period during October 19-30, 2009 at market-based prices.

Gold prices have been moving up faster than the major global currencies — which is expected to boost the value of the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

This is the first time that the Reserve Bank has bought such a large amount of gold globally. Interestingly, the market import of gold has dipped sharply this year on account of high international prices and low demand. Years ago, confiscated smuggled gold used to be assigned to RBI vaults.

However, with the opening up of the economy, gold smuggling has virtually stopped. For many year’s the central bank gold holdings remained constant at about 11.5 million troy ounce accounting for 4% its reserves worth $285 billion now.
The recent purchase of close to 6.5 million troy ounce would raise the share of gold in India’s foreign exchange reserves to about 6%. The gold is valued at the month end closing price on the London bullion exchange.

With international gold prices touching a new high every day, this part of the reserves has seen a sharp appreciation. In the month of September, reserves rose $485 million only on account of the rise in valuation of gold in reserves.

In its official release, IMF has said that the total sales proceeds are equivalent to US$ 6.7 billion or SDR 4.2 billion. MD Dominique Strauss-Kahn indicated that the proceeds from the gold sale will help the Fund, step up much-needed concessional lending to the poorest countries.

As for the central bank, there is no official communication either being the intent of such a move or its plans for the purchased gold. But experts say the move could help the central bank diversify its reserves and would not have a significant impact on the overall foreign exchange reserves position, said a former top RBI official.

This is because these purchases are reckoned to be carried out from the $4.8 billion worth SDR allocation that the RBI had obtained from the Fund earlier this year. The IMF had allocated $4.8 billion by way of general allocation of special drawing rights (SDR) — the reserve currency with the IMF — in August this year as part of its SDR 161.2 billion package allocated to member countries.

The value of SDR is a weighted average of a basket of currencies which includes the US dollar, the Sterling pound, the yen and the euro. The weightage to each currency
which is revised at regular intervals depends on their prevailing relative importance in the global markets.
via:E.T