All countries official holdings are to the tune of 941.60 million ounces, out of which the industrialised countries account for 788 million ounces. International financial institutions hold an estimated additional 133.8 million ounces.

The gold reserve statistics as published by the IMF showed considerable changes over the turn of the year, as a result of the establishment of Economic Monetary Union (EMU).

Before EMU came into formal existence on January 1, 99, the 15 member countries of the European Union had 20 per cent of their gold holdings swapped with the European Monetary Institute (EMI) in exchange for the ECU currency.

The EMI was wound up in December and the gold, totalling 87.3 million ounces was returned to the member states. In January the 11,participants in EMU transferred euro 39.47 billion to the European Central Bank (ECB) in proportion to their shareholdings in the new ECB. About 115 per cent of this was in the form of gold, amounting to 24 million ounces.

Developments in the official sector continued to capture the markets' attention during the first quarter of the calender year 1999, as even when there were no announcements of any significant sales and the fear of disposals by member countries of EMU countries had faded.

However, the debate over the possible sale of the gold holdings of the IMF to help fund the highly-indebted poor countries were revived and Switzerland took further steps towards bringing about the constitutional changes necessary for possible future gold sales.

Although the the US administration had expressed support for IMF gold sale, the US vote cannot be cast without prior authorisation from Congress, where tough scrutiny is likely.