The countries having the world’s greatest gold and currency reserves continued building them up last year, Komersant writes.

According to the daily, the first ten countries increased their international reserves by 13.3% - up to U.S. $6,400 billion. China ranks the first, its reserves totaling U.S. $2,850 billion – an 18.7% increase as compared with 2009.

Japan’s reserves totaled U.S. $1,096 billion – an annual increase of 4.5%. Switzerland’s reserves showed the sharpest increase, 25%, up to U.S. $252.3 billion AMD.  

In 2003, Armenian sold its gold reserves at U.S. $400 per ounce, accepting the false dogma that gold has no prospects as reserve. Tigran Sargsyan, who was them Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA), sold Armenia’s gold reserves. According to the latest data, the CBA’s international reserves total U.S. $1.8 billion, the greater part being in terms of foreign securities. The CBA will not provide any information on the structure of securities.