Iran's central bank will sell 45 billion euros ($54.95 billion) from its reserves to buy dollars and gold ingots, a report on the website of state-owned Press TV said on Wednesday.

There was no announcement of the sale on the bank's website and officials at the bank declined comment.

Following the report, the euro eased slightly versus the dollar from around $1.2227 to $1.2213 before recovering back to $1.2230.

Last month Iran's central bank governor hinted at a move away from the euro.

'Considering that the value of the euro is plummeting and that of the dollar is increasing, we will be examining the issue of changing the composition of Iran's hard currency basket,' Mahmoud Bahmani was quoted as saying in the May 18 edition of Hezbollah daily.

News of the sale came hours after some of the world's richest central banks said they would continue investing in Europe's ailing single currency, supporting its reserve status despite the sovereign debt crisis plaguing Europe, government sources said.

Even though both the euro zone and the US have significant fiscal challenges, the liquidity of their currencies and the difficulty of shifting such large portfolios mean there are no alternatives to them in the near term, official sources in Brazil, India, Japan and South Korea told Reuters in separate interviews.

Last November, Bahmani said Iran's then policy of moving away from the dollar, both in its reserves and in the currency it received for its oil exports, had been beneficial. – Reuters