Despite possessing the world’s fourth-largest gold reserve at 2,436 tons within the Banque de France, France operates no active gold mines.
This contrasts sharply with Mali, a major gold producer with 14 official mines, which holds no gold reserves in the Central Bank of West African States.
A similar situation exists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the seventh-largest gold producer, where central bank gold reserves are reportedly negligible, estimated by some sources at just 0.16 tons.