If the PBoC is buying gold in excess of the amount that it offically reports, then logically it will not want these purchases to appear in import/export trade statistics. Like all central banks, the PBoC classifies and holds its gold reserves as “monetary gold” (i.e. “monetary gold is gold held as a reserve asset that is available to and controlled by monetary authorities”). Monetary gold is also exempt from reporting in international trade statistics / customs data. Therefore, like all central banks, the PBoC would not have to report any monetary gold that it purchased abroad and then imported into China.

The gold reserves of the world’s biggest public sector investors reached an 18-year high as they hoarded the precious metal after Donald Trump’s election and the Brexit vote added to geopolitical uncertainty.

State investors increased their net gold holdings by 377 tonnes to an estimated 31,000 tonnes last year — the highest level since 1999, according to a study of 750 central banks, public pension plans and sovereign wealth funds with $33.5tn in assets.

An article in February on BullionStar’s website titled “A Chink of Light into London’s Gold Vaults?” discussed an upcoming development in the London Gold Market, namely that both the Bank of England (BoE) and the commercial gold vault providers in London planned to begin publishing regular data on the quantity of physical gold actually stored in their gold vaults.

Critically, this physical gold stored at both the Bank of England vaults and the commercial London vaults underpins the gargantuan trading volumes of the London Gold Market and the same market’s ‘liquidity’. Therefore, a new vault holdings dataset would be a very useful reference point for relating to London’s ‘gold’ trading volumes as well as relating to data such as the level and direction of the gold price, the volume of gold held in gold-backed Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), UK gold import and export statistics, and Swiss and Hong Kong gold imports and exports.

Guillermo Barba, the Mexican financial and economic journalist, has recently published an article on his website confirming that through an information request that he had made to Mexico’s central bank, Banco de México (Banxico), the central bank has now released what amounts to a relatively comprehensive list of Mexico’s gold bars held in storage at the Bank of England gold vaults in London.

Mexico’s list is an inventory of wholesale market gold bars that Banixco owns and stores in custody at the Bank of England vaults in London. In the contemporary parlance of the gold market, most people would call this type of holding an allocated gold holding, but more historically in the Bank of England world, it has been known as an “earmarked gold” holding or a “set-aside gold” holding because the specific bars are set-aside for a specific central bank, in other words the central bank has its name attached to those particular bars (earmarked).

Wholesale gold bars are also known as London Good Delivery gold bars or variable weight gold bars, and each weighs in the region of 400 troy ounces ( ~ 12.5 kilos). On the Banixco list, there are 7,265 wholesale gold bars listed. This new list is one of the very few detailed central bank gold bars lists (weight lists) which exists in the public domain, and it could be useful for a number of purposes (see below).

On 9 February 2017, the Deutsche Bundesbank issued an update on its extremely long-drawn-out gold repatriation program, an update in which it claimed to have transferred 111 tonnes of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Germany during 2016, while also transferring an additional 105 tonnes of gold from the Banque de France in Paris to Germany during the same time-period.

Following these assumed gold bar movements, the Bundesbank now claims to have achieved its early 2013 goal of repatriating 300 tonnes of gold from New York to Frankfurt, but after 4 years it is still 91 tonnes short of its planned transfer of 374 tonnes of gold from Paris to Frankfurt. In essence, over an entire 4-year period (i.e. 208 weeks), the Bundesbank has only been able to transfer 583 tonnes of gold back from New York and Paris to Germany. And the Bundesbank still claims to have 1236 tonnes of gold remaining in storage with the New York Fed.

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.

"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.

In this space we have recommended that Banco de México (Banxico) and any investor with positions in gold as a value reserve and financial insurance, maintain material possession of their bars and coins, or at least, store them in a vault where they are well identified And segregated from the rest.

Banxico has taken notice and not only that, has revealed its list of ingots in which specifies the producer of each and its serial number. The downside is that 99 percent of its gold reserves are still held by the Bank of England

On 5 February, the Financial Times of London (FT) featured a story revealing that the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) plans to begin publishing data on the amount of real physical gold actually stored in the London precious metals vaulting network.

What this data will cover only time will tell, but more data than less is always welcome, and these data releases might also help show how near or how far we were with earlier estimates in trying to ascertain how much gold is in the London vaulting system that is not accounted for by ETF holding or central bank holdings.

Armenia’s leadership has made a political decision to restore the country's gold reserves in the near future, a local daily "Haykakan Zhamank" (Armenian Time) says in its today’s issue.

According to the newspaper, this issue will be handled by the Central Bank. It says also there is no information how much gold will be reserved, but in all likelihood the Central Bank will buy part of the gold produced in Armenia.

Germany has completed repatriation of 300 tons of gold bars from the United States. According to Russian economist Vladimir Katasonov, initially the American side was not ready to give the bullion back, but finally came up with a plan.

According to the economist, the gold bars that Bundesbank repatriated have different labels. He suggested that the US might have replaced the German bullion with different gold bars bought from the market.