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Austrian central bank to repatriate large part of gold reserves

Xinhua, May 29, 2015 Adjust font size:

The National Bank of Austria (OeNB) plans to repatriate and relocate part of its foreign gold reserves so that 50 percent will be held within Austria by the year 2020, it revealed at a press conference in Vienna on Thursday.

The central bank currently owns a total of 280 tons of gold worth nearly 11 billion U.S. dollars, 80 percent of which is stored with the Bank of England in London, 3 percent in Switzerland, and the remaining 17 percent domestically.

The repatriation and relocation of the gold will be conducted in stages beginning in 2015, and by 2020 30 percent will be left in England, 20 percent in Switzerland, and the remainder in Vienna, to be held by both the OeNB itself and the Austrian Mint.

The OeNB said it will also conduct an evaluation on its gold storage strategy in 2019, and adapt the strategy if the need arises.

It has not revealed the full reasoning behind the decision to shift its reserves, though it comes about three months after the Austrian Court of Audit (ACA) criticized it for lacking a "comprehensive strategy" regarding the gold reserves. Endit