64 tons of gold came to India
Amid growing political turmoil and economic uncertainty across the world, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken an important step to safeguard the country’s assets. The Reserve Bank has brought back 64 tonnes of its gold kept abroad to India between March and September this year, i.e. in just six months. India no longer wants to take the risk of keeping its valuable assets on foreign soil. This step has been taken in view of the changing balance of power on the global stage and the increasing threat of ‘financial warfare’.
Why did RBI bring gold ‘home’?
There is a concrete and immediate reason behind this ‘gold-homecoming’. In recent years, the world has seen many such incidents which have raised serious questions on the credibility of foreign safes.
The biggest examples are the Russia-Ukraine war and the Taliban occupation of Afghanistan. In both cases, the G-7 group of Western countries seized billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves of Russia and Afghanistan. This was an action that forced central banks around the world to think about the safety of their assets.
A fear has arisen that if you have political differences with a country, it can use your money as a weapon against you or freeze it. In such a situation, the wisest step is to keep your gold, which is considered the safest asset of any country, on your land, in your own safes. RBI has imported a total of 274 tonnes of gold from abroad to India since March 2023.
How much gold is there in India’s treasury now?
According to the data till the end of September 2025, the Reserve Bank of India has a total of 880.8 tonnes of gold. After this move, a large part of this, i.e. 575.8 tonnes of gold, is now kept safe in India’s own vaults.
Apart from this, 290.3 tonnes of gold is still kept with the Bank of England (BoE) and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). Both these institutions have traditionally been involved in storing gold for central banks around the world. Also, 14 tonnes of gold has been kept as gold deposit.
If we compare with the figures of March 31 this year, RBI had a total of 879 tonnes of gold, out of which 512 tonnes was in India and 348.6 tonnes abroad. A direct comparison of these figures shows how within six months 64 tonnes of gold was brought to India and foreign holdings have been reduced.