France might sell gold to fund research -minister
Wednesday March 10, 6:25 am ET
PARIS, March 10 (Reuters) - France may consider selling some of its gold to help finance scientific research after top scientists started working to rule to demand more state support, Research Minister Claudie Haignere said on Wednesday.
The Bank of France has not sold gold in recent years and had no immediate comment on Haignere's suggestion, which echoed an idea floated for Germany by Bundesbank chief Ernst Welteke and backed by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
France's conservative government, dismayed that 2,000 scientists have stopped carrying out their administrative work, has earmarked three billion euros for research in 2005-2007.
It hopes to staunch a "brain drain" of researchers, mostly towards the United States, but has not said how it will fund this.
Doing so will be difficult because it has vowed to bring France's public sector deficit, which soared to 4.1 percent of GDP last year from 3.2 percent in 2002, back under the euro zone's three percent ceiling.
"We have to find the means to finance the future research. That could be the Bank of France's gold, it could be the funds we get from privatisations," Haignere told Europe 1 radio in an interview.
Europe's central banks agreed on Monday to raise the limits on their gold sales to 500 metric tonnes a year for the next five years, a rise of 100 metric tonnes from a previous five-year deal.
At current market prices of some $400 per ounce, raising the three billion euros that the French government has earmarked for research would imply sales of roughly 185 tonnes of gold.
In the French protests, 2,000 scientists resigned on Tuesday as administrators for their laboratories, a symbolic step that could gradually bring research in public laboratories to a halt.
The protests was a setback to the conservative government's hopes of avoiding a backlash over budget cuts as France approaches regional elections on March 21 and 28.
biz.yahoo.com
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Date: Wed Mar 10 2004 11:10
trotsky (today's problem) ID#377387:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
isn't really the dollar...it's THIS:
"France might sell gold to fund research"
biz.yahoo.com
as Julian Philips mentioned, an announcement of French sales intentions would be a huge psychological blow to the market in the short term. |
