{"id":13234,"date":"2015-10-10T16:46:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T21:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13234"},"modified":"2015-10-10T16:46:37","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T21:46:37","slug":"the-real-reason-belgium-sold-1098-tonnes-of-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13234","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Belgium sold 1,098 tonnes of its official gold reserves since 1978.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

For our global\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0how much physical gold central banks have stored at what location and how much is leased out, I decided to submit the local equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request at the central bank of Belgium, de Nationale Bank van Belgi\u00eb\u00a0(NBB), to obtain\u00a0information about the amount of Belgian official gold reserves, the exact location of all gold bars, the type of gold accounts NBB holds at the Bank Of England (BOE) and how much is\u00a0leased out and to whom. The outcome of this research\u00a0was not what I had\u00a0expected.<\/p>\n

History Of The Official Gold Reserves Of Belgium<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Some of the questions I directed at the NBB I used a stepping stone, as this information is publicly available in part. At the end of August 2015 NBB was holding 227.4 tonnes of gold, down 0.04 tonnes from 227.44 tonnes in July, according to data from the\u00a0Bundesbank<\/a>\u00a0that publishes the gold holdings of 19 European central banks and the ECB\u00a0in compliance with\u00a0the IMF\u2019s most recent version of the\u00a0Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6)<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0The Bundesbank (BuBa) publishes the fine troy ounces of the official gold reserves in \u2018Gold bullion\u2019 and \u2018Unallocated gold accounts\u2019. If we add up both categories the outcome for all countries equals the reserves\u00a0disclosed by the World Gold Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0BuBa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The balance of payments statistics will \u2026\u00a0be consistent with the framework set out in the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6). The application of the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6) is binding for EU member states by virtue of a regulation adopted by the European Commission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Back in 1965 NBB was holding over 1,300 tonnes of gold. Since 1978 it has sold a whopping\u00a01,098 tonnes, or 83 %.<\/p>\n

\"Belgium<\/a><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Real Reason Belgium Sold 1,098 Tonnes Of Gold Belgium sold 1,098 tonnes of its official gold reserves since 1978.\u00a0 For our global\u00a0investigation\u00a0how much physical gold central banks have stored at what location and how much is leased out, I decided to submit the local equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[56,1957,8726,5088,4286,374,9758,418,434,647,1988],"class_list":["post-13234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bank-of-england","tag-belgium","tag-bullionstar-com","tag-foia","tag-freedom-of-information-act","tag-gold","tag-gold-bullion","tag-imf","tag-international-monetary-fund","tag-precious-metals","tag-world-gold-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13235,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13234\/revisions\/13235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}