104 tonnes of gold returned to IndiaImage Credit source: ai generated
When it comes to our and your life’s hard-earned money, we want to keep it in the safest place possible. This is exactly what our country is doing right now. For decades, gold from countries around the world was considered safe in the safes of big banks in London and New York. But now the direction of the wind is changing. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is bringing back its gold kept abroad very fast. This is not just a financial step, but a major strategy to protect our economy from any external shock in the changing global situation. The country’s treasure is now being secured in its own home, so that if there is any economic or political earthquake in the world, our foundation remains strong.
What is the real reason for changing the safes?
If we look at the latest data of the Reserve Bank (half yearly report from October 2025 to March 2026), the picture becomes very clear. India currently has a total of 880.52 metric tons of gold. About 77 percent of it i.e. about 680 tonnes has now been kept safe within the country. Whereas 197.67 tonnes of gold is with the Bank of England and Bank for International Settlements (BIS), while 2.8 tonnes is in the form of deposits. How fast this change has happened can be gauged from the fact that within just six months, 104.23 tonnes of gold has been brought back to the country. Remember, till March 2023 only 37 percent of our gold was in the country. This pace shows that India is no longer taking any kind of external risk lightly.
Why is foreign assets under threat?
In fact, incidents like the Russia-Ukraine war and the subsequent ban on the reserve funds of Afghanistan and Russia by the Western countries (G7) have given sleepless nights to the central banks of the whole world. The world has understood that sovereign assets held in other countries are not completely safe from political decisions. According to Ritesh Jain of Pinetree Macro, in today’s collapsing global monetary system, if gold is not in your direct possession, then it is not really yours. This step of India is a kind of ‘strategic insurance’. It will be useful for liquidity in times of crisis only when it is within our reach. This is the reason why despite the decline in total foreign exchange reserves of $691.1 billion, the share of gold has increased from 13.9 percent to 16.7 percent.
Not only in India, there is competition all over the world
Historically, London and New York have been the largest centers of gold trading, where transactions can be easily done without physically moving the gold. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York itself has more than 5 lakh gold bricks and the Bank of England acts as a hub for more than 60 central banks. But now many countries are changing their strategy.
- France: Bank of France recently shifted its 129 tonnes of gold from New York to Paris, due to which it also made a capital gain of 12.8 billion euros.
- Germany: Germany, one of the countries with the world’s largest reserves (3,352 tonnes), had recalled 300 tonnes of gold between 2014 and 2017. However, one-third of it is still in New York, about which leaders like Markus Ferber of the European Parliament are expressing concern amid the possibility of Donald Trump’s return.
- Poland and Czech Republic: Poland’s Governor Adam Glapinski is calling it ‘national flexibility and strategic autonomy’ and is balancing his model. At the same time, officials like Jan Kubicek of the Czech Republic are still using the Bank of England to save transaction costs.
