Netherlands Bank moves 122.5 tonnes of gold from New York to Amsterdam

The Netherlands Bank has repatriated 122.5 tonnes of gold from the US, it announced today (November 21), as it looks to spread its reserves more evenly across the globe.

The central bank holds 612.5 tonnes of gold, currently worth around €18.9 billion. Under the previous allocation, 51% was kept in the US, 20% in Canada, 18% in the UK and just 11% in the Netherlands.

After this most recent move, the central bank now holds an even 31% of its gold reserves in both New York and Amsterdam.

Announcing the change, The Netherlands Bank said it would create a "more balanced distribution of the gold stock across the different locations" and this could "have a positive effect on public confidence".

This is becoming something of a trend in Europe. In January 2013 the Deutsche Bundesbank announced it would repatriate almost 700 tonnes of gold over a seven-year period. When this move is complete, it will hold half of its reserves in its own vaults.

Switzerland will vote on the ‘gold initiative' later this month – a set of proposals that would force the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to hold 20% of its assets in gold and prevent it from ever selling them. All gold holdings would have to be repatriated.

The SNB has rejected the proposals. Several members of the central bank's senior leadership team have spoken out against them, including governing board chairman Thomas Jordan and, most recently, board member Fritz Zurbrügg.

"The SNB considers the initiative to be unnecessary and harmful. Its legal mandate is to ensure price stability," Zurbrügg said at a money market event in Geneva yesterday.

"In a system of flexible exchange rates, gold is no longer required for it to perform this function and the gold initiative is therefore unnecessary."

The SNB holds 1,040 tonnes of gold. Zurbrügg said the lion's share – approximately 70% – is already held in Switzerland, with the rest stored over "multiple locations for reasons of risk diversification".

From this point of view, it seems natural for The Netherlands Bank to move some of its reserves back to Amsterdam. Moving gold is not a cheap or easy process, however, and central banks prefer to avoid it where possible.

The last time The Netherlands Bank moved gold en masse was in 2000, when the vaults of the Reserve Bank of Australia were closed and the central bank shipped its holdings to the UK. After the latest move, The Netherlands Bank is not expected to move any more gold in the immediate future.