Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mexico's Central Bank buys 100 tonnes of gold bullion

The main LatAm goldbug story out today is that Mexico has finally done the right thing and its Central Bank is a buyer of gold. During February and March, The Mexico Central Bank (known as Banxico) ploughed more than U$5Bn into buying around 3.25m troy ounces of gold (that's 100 metric tonnes). So according to those preliminary numbers, Banxico paid over U$1,500 for each ounce (1538). Apparently the FT broke the story, but we don't link to them cos they have a stupid firewall. Instead, hear more about the news via this Spanish language link.

UPDATE: On rummaging round the Banxico website it's not easy to spot the datapoint, but it's worth noting here that Mexico's total international currency reserves (i.e. us dollars) stood at U$125Bn as at April 2011 so the gold bullion purchase works out as 4% of Mexican reserves. Hardly a game-changer in itself, so goldbugs will be better advised to obsess over the trend.