Today, Serbia has about 32 tons of gold. In euros – that’s 1.66 billion. In levers – 2,500 pieces. If you lined them up in one continuous sequence, this golden train would be about 450 meters long, that is, you could make a real golden wire that would stretch through more than half of the main Belgrade “strip”, Knez Mihailova Street.
That is the length of about four football fields, we can say the length of four Belgrade Marakana, writes Blic.
The NBS keeps about 96 percent of gold reserves in the form of levers, and one lever weighs 12.5 kilograms. At the end of November last year, Serbia had 21 tons of gold, but then the National Bank of Serbia bought another nine tons. That the NBS should work on increasing gold reserves could be heard many times from the very top of the government, so the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, publicly said that more gold bars means greater security of the country, and almost the same messages were sent by leaders of many countries.
Thus, Poland returned 100 tons to its country, and Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey are working very seriously on increasing “domestic gold reserves”. By the way, gold in some great powers makes up as much as 70 percent of their total foreign exchange reserves.
At the end of September, the gross foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank of Serbia amounted to 13 billion euros. Of that, about 12.7 percent of foreign exchange reserves were gold reserves – 32.12 tons of gold with a total value of 1.66 billion euros or about 1.95 billion dollars.
Gold is almost entirely stored (about 96 percent) in the form of gold bars, while only about 4 percent is stored in the form of forged gold. Of the total amount of gold, about two thirds are in the NBS vault, while approximately one third is in the NBS accounts abroad, with the most eminent and secure institutions. This achieved the diversification of the place where gold reserves are kept, which additionally strengthens their security, according to the NBS.
Calculation: Here’s how much the lever fits in a ton
If, while watching movies, it once seemed strange to you that such a small lever can seriously bother someone who carries it, things will become clearer to you when you hear how heavy it is.
Namely, the average weight of one gold bar is 12.5 kilograms, so that one ton of gold makes about 80 bars. When it comes to the dimensions of gold bars that are kept in the vault of the National Bank of Serbia, they are 17.78 X 9.21 X 4.45 cm. The fineness of the gold from which they are cast is 999/1000, ie their content represents 99.9 percent of pure gold.
This precious metal serves as a guarantee of trust in the central bank, especially in challenging times. In addition, this form of assets is more difficult to influence through the interest rate policies of different monetary authorities, while it usually serves as a form of protection against inflation in the long run.
Also, the low correlation of gold with traditional forms of assets in which foreign exchange reserves are held, such as the US dollar, makes gold useful for the purpose of further portfolio diversification, Vesti Online reports.
