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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Volquardsen who wrote (16722)	8/27/1998 2:29:00 PM
From: William JH	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116818

I don't know about the gold standard, but here's something from Kinross "Management Proxy Circular" dated April 23, l998: "The Russian Government requires all mineral licence holders to sell gold and silver produced in the Russian Federation to an agency of the Russian Government.........at the London fix price for gold and silver, less refining, transportation and insurance costs.....the purchase price is payable 50% in U.S. dollars and 50% in roubles. All the purchase price for silver is payable in roubles." Edited by me for brevity. Page 124, Management Proxy Circular of Kinross Gold Corporation.

To: Henry Volquardsen who wrote (16722)	8/27/1998 5:53:00 PM
From: Alex	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116818

Russia banks propose gold as alternative to dollar By Aleksandras Budrys MOSCOW, Aug 27 (Reuters) - The Association of Russian Banks (ARB) has proposed easing regulations for the public to buy gold as an alternative to foreign currency in the present financial crisis, the ARB president said on Thursday. ''We must create an infrastructure for the population to buy not only dollars...but also gold,'' Sergei Yegorov, ARB president, told a news briefing. The ARB had submitted a proposal on this to a trilateral commission, consisting of representatives of both houses of parliament and the government, he said. The commission was now working on a package of measures to overcome the current crisis. Russians rushed to buy dollars to preserve their savings after the government and central bank allowed an effective devaluation of the currency by widening the bands in which it will be permitted to fluctuate to 6.0/9.5 to the dollar from 5.27/7.13 last week. There are very few places where dollars are available even at high exchange rates as banks prefer to retain their dollar reserves. Yegorov said there could be demand for up to 270 tonnes of gold from the public, some 250 tonnes of which would come from central bank reserves and the rest from commercial banks. This could only be done if the value added tax on gold ingot sales was eliminated, he said. Buyers of gold from commercial banks are liable to value added tax (VAT) at 20 percent, while the price of gold is established by the central bank at one percent over the daily London fix. Russians have bought about a tonne of gold from commercial banks in the last seven days despite the VAT, the head of ARB's precious metals department, Dmitry Ignatyev, told the briefing. He said one of the proposals by the ARB was to issue ''chervonets'' gold coins to the public with an overall face value of one billion roubles. The ''chervonets'' notes with a 10-rouble nominal value, in circulation in the 1920s, were convertible because they were backed by the state's gold reserves. ''We propose that the central bank set a price for the coins and issue guarantees that it would be prepared to buy them back at the same price within three months,'' Ignatyev said. Earlier, Ignatiev said Russian commercial banks were expected to buy about 80 tonnes of gold from producers this year. Russia's central bank suspended all foreign currency trade on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) exchange for the second successive day because of fears the rouble was going into free fall. It later announced there would be no trading on Friday as well.