中国对黄金不热衷 令金价受压

The International Monetary Fund last year announced it would sell 403.3 metric tons of gold to raise money for poor countries. This immediately sparked speculation that China would be a major purchaser-and the rumor spread through the market like wild fire.

But comments out of China Tuesday seemed to dampen this theory even more than news from the IMF last month. The IMF said in February it would begin selling the remaining 191.3 tons on the market because it couldn't find another central bank buyer.

Now China's chief foreign-exchange regulator Yi Gang said Tuesday at a news conference during the National People's Congress that 'currently a few factors limit our ability to increase foreign-exchange investment in gold,' putting out some of the fire that the country would buy big and buy publicly.

The comments suggested that China's gold purchases overall will be limited for now. The metal initially traded down $3 before tumbling more as the dollar gained later in the day.

While some said the public statements were a ploy by China to talk down the price to enable it to purchase gold quietly on the market, others said the reality is that China's reserves are large, the gold market small, and that it doesn't make sense for the country to use gold as its main means of diversifying.

Currently, China is the world's sixth largest official holder of the metal at 1,054 metric tons, data from the World Gold Council from the end of 2009 shows.

While sixth, its gold holdings still only account for 1.5% of the country's total reserve holdings, a small amount compared with the largest gold holder, the U.S., where gold holdings account for 68.7% of total reserves.

China has increased holdings-in April last year the country suddenly acknowledged that gold reserves rose by 454 tons since 2003 to 1,054 tons-but it would take quite a lot of gold to reach the levels in the U.S.

'For China to have a material amount of gold in reserves it would disrupt the gold market,' said Stephen Briggs, a metals analyst at RBS Global Banking & Markets. 'The gold market gets hyped up by these ideas…this should quieten some of the more rabid tongues.'

That's not to say China won't continue to purchase, particularly from its own production. China is the largest gold producer in the world.

More significant gold investment may come from funds and private investors instead. China's sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp. became a major gold investor in gold equities and exchange traded funds, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing for the end of 2009 showed. As of Dec. 31, 2009, CIC held shares worth $155.6 million in the SPDR Gold Trust, the world's biggest gold exchange-traded fund.