Thailand now in Pole Position for 2021
In fact, with China and Russia now ‘officially’ out of the market for buying gold since 2019 and early 2020, respectively, this Bank of Thailand gold buying is the largest short-term gold accumulation operation by any central bank sovereign since the Polish central bank bought 100 tonnes of gold in London during the first half of 2019 and promptlyto Warsaw. Thailand’s 90 tonnes addition in its gold reserves over April and May comprised a 43.5 tonnes increase in during April, and another 46.5 tonnes increase during May, taking its total gold reserves from 154 tonnes to 244 tonnes, a 58.4% increase. While the Polish and Hungarian gold purchases were announced in official press releases and attracted plenty of media attention, the same cannot be said of Thailand’s 90 tonnes purchase. In fact, apart from the publication of updates to its international reserve data position (both on its website and in an IMF database), there has been no comment from the Thai central bank that they have made this massive gold purchase. Media coverage of Thailand’s gold buying has also been thin on the ground, with only a few references to Thailand’s April gold buying, and as of yet, practically nothing about the Bank’s gold buying during May. The Data – Discreet Updates The first place where additions to Thailand’s gold reserve position are published is in the Bank of Thailand’s weekly ‘International Reserves’ report, which can be accessed here. Since this report only shows Thailand’s gold reserves reported in ‘millions of US dollars’, the number of fine ounces held has to be inferred. In early May, this report (based on LBMA afternoon gold prices on month end dates) showed that Thailand’s gold holdings had risen from 4,948,620 ozs on 26 March, to 6,351,976 ozs on 30 April, i.e. a 43.65 tonnes increase. In early June, this report showed that Thailand was reporting gold holdings of 7,862,528 ozs of gold, a 46.98 tonnes increase on the end of May, and a cumulative 90.6 tonnes increase on the end of March. When central banks publish reserve data updates, they sooner or later then report the same data to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which in turn publishes these updates in its International Financial Statistics (IFS) database. As a verification source, you could argue that when central bank gold reserve holdings data appears in the IMF database, then you can assume its valid, since it is this IMF source which organisations such as the World Gold Council in turn use to produce their global central bank gold holdings rankings. Turning to the IMF IFS data tables, and running an extract for Official Reserve Assets of Thailand over March, April and May 2021 (which includes the variable Volume in Millions of Fine Troy Ounces), we find that the figures check out nearly exactly as per the Bank of Thailand website, with month-end reported gold holdings in the IFS table of 4.95 million ozs in March, 6.35 million ozs in April, and 7.85 million in May. This equates to a 1.4 million ozs gold purchase in April, and a 1.5 million oz gold purchase in May, for a total of 2.9 million ozs. Which is equivalent to additions of 43.54 tonnes in April and 46.65 tonnes in May (or 90.2 tonnes in total). So that’s incredibly close to the inferred figures from the Bank of Thailand weekly report.
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