Central Gold-Trust, a self governing unit trust, announced Wednesday that it launching North America’s first gold bullion unit trust offering.

Central Gold-Trust will invest substantially all of the net proceeds of an issue of units in 400 troy ounce international bars of physical gold bullion, which will be stored on an unencumbered, allocated and segregated basis in the treasury vaults of a Canadian Chartered Bank.

The trust will be administered by a very experienced group of gold bullion investment managers in North America including Eric Sprott, John Embry, Stefan Spicer and Philip Spicer, who is the founder and Chairman of Central Fund of Canada Ltd.

The units will qualify for inclusion in regulated accounts such as RRSPs and RRIFs, which would not be the case were an individual investor to hold physical gold bullion directly.

According to Central-Gold Trust, the trust offers the lowest fee structure of any publicly listed bullion investment vehicle in North America.

who is both a Trustee and an advisor to Gold-Trust stated: “Gold bullion has outperformed the major North American indices in each of the last three years. We believe this outperformance will continue given the poor outlook for the financial markets.

“Central Gold Managers Inc. has structured Central Gold-Trust as a very low cost unit trust investment that will enable investors to diversify the risk profile of their portfolios while providing direct participation in gold bullion in the safest and most cost-effective way possible,” said Eric Sprott, a trustee and advisor to the trust, in a news release.

The offering will be marketed by a syndicate of investment dealers co-led by CIBC World Markets Inc. and RBC Capital Markets. Marketing of the offering is expected to begin in May 2003.

Central Gold has filed a preliminary prospectus with securities regulatory authorities across Canada, and an application has been made to list the units on the Toronto Stock Exchange.