The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said it would shortly begin selling 191.3 tonnes of gold in the open market under a program approved last year to boost its resources for lending.
The open-market sales are a part of a programme launched last year and, until now, gold has been made available to central banks on a first-come-first-serve basis.
So far, India -- the world's biggest consumer of gold -- Mauritius and Sri Lanka have purchased a total of 212 tonnes of gold from the IMF.
The IMF announced last year it would sell 403.3 tonnes of gold, about one-eighth of its total stock, to diversify its sources of income and increase low-cost lending to poor.
For a graphic of gold as a percentage of total reserves for the top holders by country, click http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/0210/GLD_TPHLD0210.gif
The 10 countries with the highest levels of gold holdings by December 2009 (in tonnes):
Dec 2009 March 2009 % of reserves
All countries 26,780.0 26,349.4 10.2
United States 8,133.5 8,133.5 68.7
Germany 3,407.6 3,412.6 64.6
Italy 2,451.8 2,451.8 63.4
France 2,435.4 2,487.1 64.2
China 1,054.0 1,054.0 1.5
Switzerland 1,040.1 1,040.1 28.8
Japan 765.2 765.2 2.4
Netherlands 612.5 612.5 51.7
Russia 607.7 523.7 4.7
India 557.7 357.7 6.4
The percentage of reserves is as calculated by the World Gold Council. The value of gold holdings is calculated using the end-October gold price of $1,040 per troy ounce.
Source: World Gold Council.
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