The RBI’s ongoing move to hold increasingly more gold domestically is part of a new trend that took shape in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (Source: File)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) brought more than 100 metric tonne (MT) of its gold to India in 2025-26 – the third year in a row it has done so. According to data released late Thursday, the second half of 2025-26 saw the Indian central bank bring 104.23 MT of its gold from abroad – held with the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements – to Indian shores, adding to the 63.83 MT it had brought home in the first half of the year.
In total, the RBI brought 168.06 MT of gold to India in 2025-26, up from 107.21 MT in 2023-24 and 103.68 MT in 2024-25.
As a result of the latest transfer, the RBI now holds 77% of its 880.52 MT of gold holdings – which were worth $122 billion as on April 17 – domestically. This is sharply higher than 38% as recently as March 2023.
The RBI’s ongoing move to hold increasingly more gold domestically is part of a new trend that took shape in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The attacks led to the US freezing Russia’s dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves, which sparked a shift by central banks around the world towards holding more non-dollar denominated foreign currency assets. According to the World Gold Council’s Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey 2025, released in June last year, 59% of central bankers picked ‘domestic storage’ for where they currently vault at least part of their gold reserves, up from 35% in 2023 and 28% in 2019.
“Looking forward to the next 12 months… 7% (of respondents) indicated they would increase their domestic storage; slightly more than the previous year (2%),” the World Gold Council said.
While the RBI has been increasing how much gold it stores domestically, it did not add meaningfully to its overall gold reserves in 2025-26, with the central bank’s gold holdings in volume terms having increased by only about 10% – or 86 MT – in the last three years. This is in stark contrast to some other central banks around the world, who have purchased gold heavily in the last couple of years as geopolitical conflicts force diversification of foreign exchange reserves.
According to World Gold Council data, the National Bank of Poland was the biggest buyer of gold in the first three months of 2026, followed by the likes of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan and People’s Bank of China. In fact, the National Bank of Poland has been the biggest buyer of gold among central banks for some time now, purchasing almost 200 tonne in 2024 and 2025 combined. Earlier this year in January, the Polish central bank approved plans to buy 150 tonnes of gold, which would “place Poland among the elite 10 countries with the largest gold reserves in the world,” it had said.
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“Based on the strong start to the year, we expect central banks to contribute meaningfully to global gold demand going forward, as geoeconomic uncertainty stays elevated and reserve-diversification incentives remain intact,” the World Gold Council said in a report on Wednesday.
Despite little change in how much gold it held in 2025-26, the share of gold in the RBI’s foreign exchange reserves jumped from 11.7% as at the end of 2024-25 to 16.7% thanks to global gold prices rising sharply on account of heightened trade and geopolitical uncertainty.
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