Another month, another few tons of gold added to Russia’s gold reserves / monetary reserves. Russia simply will not stop adding more gold to their monetary reserves. With a drop of 85+% of their U.S. debt holdings, U.S. Treasuries, in their monetary reserves they need something to be able to conduct trade or offer collateral for large scale projects. Oh, no actually they don’t since Russia has almost no debt and produces most of what they consume. So, their “savings account” continues to grow.
January was no different than any of the previous months for the past 7-8 continuous years. Although last month was down from their norm of approximately 20 tons per month to 6.22 tons / 200,000 ounces.
The real story is the fact that Russia, the number 3 gold producer in the world, consumed 87% of their total gold mining production in 2018. The importance of this can not be overstated. Russia does not produce gold coins or bars nor is their a thriving gold market where artisans are producing incredible art pieces like are created in other parts of the world.
We have the number 1 gold producer in the world, China, that funnels close to 100% of their internal gold production into one of their government gold accounts. A small amount, really it’s a tiny amount, of the domestically mined Chinese gold is used to produce coins, bars and, I would imagine, a few gold art pieces. China has several government gold accounts she can place gold into that doesn’t require international reporting. Russia simply doesn’t care and places the gold in their monetary reserves for the world to see. Russia even invited the world into their gold and silver vault to get an up close view of their “stack”.
With the two of the top three gold producers in the world keeping the majority of their domestic production this is going to have a major impact on the rest of the world. Australia, the worlds second largest gold producer, already sells a significant amount of their gold into the Chinese market. South Africa, as we just reported, is losing ground with the gold production. Just a few years ago South Africa was the largest gold producer in the world and in December they reported a, y-o-y, 31% drop in their gold production. How this will impact their global ranking for gold production has yet to be seen, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter – they are losing ground and that’s what matters most.
This is another excellent update from Louis Cammarosano, smaulgld, covering this subject in great detail. Well worth your time.
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