Greece’s central bank said on Saturday it held 149.1 tonnes of gold reserves at the end of December worth 5.26 billion euros ($5.55 billion), with about half kept in its vaults and the rest stored abroad.
Responding to a report of Kyriakatiki Dimokratia newspaper that half of its gold reserves had been handed over to the European Central Bank, the Bank of Greece said a small amount was transferred to the ECB when Greece joined the euro zone in 2001.
The Bank of Greece then became part of the Eurosystem of central banks.
“About half of the gold reserves are in the vaults and have not moved in the last decades. The remainder is kept at the Bank of England, the New York Fed and in Switzerland,” the Bank of Greece said in a statement.
It said storing part of its gold reserves abroad was an international practice followed by almost all central banks.
“There has been no change in the last years, apart from very small fluctuations related to the buying and selling of gold coins.”
The Bank of Greece said it sold 20 tonnes of gold in 2003 as part of portfolio management moves, converting some of the gold coins it had amassed into.
