ZURICH -- The Swiss National Bank is not planning further sales of its gold reserves despite investment risks from the volatile commodity, SNB board member Philipp Hildebrand said on Thursday.

In a speech following the Swiss central bank's decision to raise benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points, Hildebrand cited gold price fluctuations and the dollar exchange rate as the dominant risks to reserve values.

"Gold poses the most substantial contribution to risk," he said, noting that changes to prices could add or subtract 3 billion Swiss francs ($2.48 billion) to the central bank's reserve holdings every second year.

Still, he stressed that the SNB has no plans to further reduce its 1,290 tonnes of gold reserves, after its sales programme first announced in 1999 and completed last year.

"We have already said that we have not planned further gold sales," Hildebrand told journalists in Zurich. He said the SNB had "substantially reduced" its share of dollar investments over the past few years, in part because of the availability of the euro as an important reserve currency.

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