In keeping with their new policy, the People's Bank of China today announced their updated gold reserves, stated as a part of their total foreign currency reserves update for August.
Again, after finally announcing a new alleged total for their gold reserves back in July, the PBoC also stated that they would begin updating their gold reserves every month going forward. Our man, StevenBHorse was the first to catch the July update back on August 10 and we posted the information here, nearly three full days before other websites caught on:
http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/7053/pboc-gold-holdings-rise-15-july
When the "official" numbers were announced three days later, it was discovered that we overstated by 20% the total number of tonnes added in July because it was still unclear as to which pricing/valuing mechanism the PBoC was using to mark their gold hoard. With another month of reporting behind us, it seems clear now that the PBoC is using the London PM fix of the last calendar trading day of their month. Recall that China was "closed" last Monday so the PM fix used was Friday, August 28 and the number was $1135.00.
http://www.lbma.org.uk/pricing-and-statistics
To find the updated total number of ounces of gold in the "official" PBoC reserves, all we have to do is reverse the mathematical process.
Below is the official SAFE (State Administration of Foreign Exchange) update from earlier today (click to enlarge):
Again, just reverse engineer the math using the 8/28 PM fix price of $1135 and you get an addition of 514,900 troy ounces or 16.15 metric tonnes. This brings their total reported "official" holdings up to about 1,693 metric tonnes of gold.
So, while the much bigger news today is that China did, in fact, disgorge $94B in U.S. treasury securities last month (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-07/numbers-are-china-dumps-record-94-billion-us-treasurys-one-month), we can also state definitively that China continues to officially accumulate gold at a pace of around 200-220 metric tonnes per year.
TF
