Kitco News – China’s gold reserves rose by nearly 19 tonnes in July from June, and the country has become more vocal with its reserves, disclosing its holdings for the second time in two months. Juan Carlos Artigas, director of investment research for the World Gold Council (WGC), said he sees it as Beijing’s bid to increase transparency. The last time China had unveiled its numbers prior to the end of June, was in April 2009. ‘The announcement today is quite interesting,’ Artigas observed. ‘We see this a move towards transparency and that the Chinese government is signaling their commitment to the internationalization of the renminbi and the importance gold has in foreign reserves in achieving something like this,’ he said. China’s central bank has been campaigning for the International Monetary Fund to include the yuan in its special drawing rights basket. ‘There was an expectation by part of market [at the end of June] that they had increased their reserves by 600 tonnes, part of the market was expecting a higher number, we were expecting 500 plus tonnes – so that was more or less in-line.’ In the interview with Kitco News, Artigas also commented on some key findings from the WGC’s quarterly gold trends report issued this week. The report found that world gold demand fell to a six-year low of 914.9 metric tons in the second quarter, a decline of 12% from the same period a year ago. Artigas explained that the decline was blamed largely on less buying from the two largest gold-consuming nations of China and India.
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