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Wednesday March 10, 10:20 pm Eastern Time
Lawson says ECB unlikely to permit gold sales
PERTH, March 11 (Reuters) - The new European Central Bank is unlikely to permit national European banks to sell gold reserves in the near future, Central Europe Trust chairman Nigel Lawson said on Thursday.
''For the foreseeable future, the ECB is not going to permit gold sales by the other central banks of Euroland,'' Lawson told the Australian Gold Conference.
Lawson, a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, said gold sales by countries in the European Union would undermine efforts to build-up the strength of the new European currency, the euro, against the U.S. dollar.
He estimated that national European central banks held about 40 percent of the world's gold reserves, compared with 25 percent in the United States.
Gold sales would strenthen the U.S. dollar's role as the world's currency, he said.
Gold bank sales prior to the launch of the ECB last year, namely by Belgium, which sold 70 percent of its reserves and the Netherlands, which sold 40 percent of reserves, were timed to pre-empt ECB policy against sales, Lawson said.
''They realised that once the European Central Bank came into being, they would no longer have the freedom to do that,'' he said.
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