Chinese gold cheaper than IMF's - ex-PBOC adviser

5 November 2009  Reuters

By Zhou Xin and Tom Miles

BEIJING (Reuters) - It would be cheaper for China to buy domestically mined gold than purchase bullion the International Monetary Fund is seeking to sell, a former adviser to the People's Bank of China said on Thursday.

Asked whether China should emulate India, which last month bought 200 tonnes of IMF gold at an average price of $1,045 an ounce, Li Yang told reporters on the sidelines of a financial forum: "China's gold is much cheaper than that."

Li, who used to be a member of the PBOC's monetary policy committee, is now a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

China, the world's top producer and consumer of gold, is widely assumed to still be buying up domestic gold production after revealing in April that it held 1,054 tonnes of gold, a jump of 76 percent from its last word on the subject six years previously.

http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-43702720091105