Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Central Banks Turn to Gold amid Economic Uncertainty


Tue 11 Jun 2019 | 10:41 PM
Taarek Refaat

According to the World Gold Council's monthly report, Russia, China, and Uzbekistan were the countries with the highest purchasing amount of the yellow metal last April.

Since 2010, central banks stopped trading gold and started a new era of purchases. The yellow metal is usually used as a hedge against economic uncertainty and a safe haven asset.

In countries around the world, Central banks holdings of the precious totaled 34.023 thousand tons at the end of April this year, with net purchases in that month alone reaching 43 tons, up 8 percent from the preceding month.

The total net purchases of central banks that have been reported during the first 4 months of 2019 reached 207 tons, the highest level since 2010.

There is a global trend towards purchasing the precious metal, particularly since the highest annual purchases in nearly 50 years was recorded in 2018.

This year, five central banks reported an increase in their reserves of more than one tonne during the month of April, bringing the total number of banks that raised their reserves to eight at a purchasing amount of 212 tons from January- April.

[caption id="attachment_56262" align="aligncenter" width="761"] Queen Elizabeth inspects gold reserves at Bank of England[/caption]

Demand for the yellow metal was particularly reported among central banks of emerging markets, with Russia, Turkey, China, Kazakhstan, and India being the top buyers this year.

Germany was the only country to report a decline in the volume of gold reserves by more than one tonne last April. However, Russia was the leading buyer of the precious metal, adding 15 tons of gold to its reserves last April.

Taking the same path as the Russian Bear, China also purchased 15 tons of gold in the same month.

Both Russia and China have observed a shift in recent years to become one of the world's leading gold buyers, placing both countries within the world's top 7 gold holders.

Uzbekistan, which added 8 tons of gold to its reserves, came in the third spot.

However, the United States remained at the top spot of the world's leading gold holders with 8133.5 tonnes, accounting for 74.6 percent of its overall reserves.

Germany came in second with 3367.9 tonnes of gold followed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with 2814 tonnes.

Italy and France came in fourth and fifth place with 2451.8 tons and 2436 tonnes sequentially. Russia ranked sixth, followed by China, with total gold holdings of 2,183.4 tons and 1,900.4 tons respectively.

In addition, Switzerland holds 1040 tonnes of gold, followed by Japan with 765.2 tons. India came in the tenth spot, with 612.6 tons of gold or 6.1 percent of the global reserves.