CHINA’S central bank, the People’s Bank of China, has remained the world’s biggest sovereign asset holder, with more than US$3.4 trillion on its books, despite suffering a 12 percent slump in the value of its assets in 2015, a new report showed yesterday.

    The annual report, compiled in its third year by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) and to be released in full today, looks at asset management performance by public investors such as central banks, sovereign funds and public pension funds.

    The highlights of the report showed that total assets under management of the 500 largest public investors fell by 2.9 percent, or US$855 billion, to US$28.99 trillion in 2015.

    The decline was driven primarily by central banks, which saw their assets shrink by 6.1 percent due to low oil prices, a fall in gold prices and rising capital outflows from emerging market economies.

    Meanwhile, public pension funds saw assets fall by 0.6 percent, while those of sovereign funds grew at 0.04 percent, their slowest pace in at least a decade, said the OMFIF.

    The list of the 10 biggest investors showed little change from the previous year, the report found, with Asian institutions continuing to dominate the ranking. Within the top 10, the biggest climb was by China Investment Corp., China’s sovereign wealth fund, which rose to No. 5 after its assets under management increased by 14.4 percent.

    The move displaced the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the kingdom’s central bank, which posted a more than 15 percent fall in its assets under management, the greatest loss in the top 10.

    The report found that central banks’ net gold purchases accelerated to the highest ever annual rate last year. (SD-Agencies)