How much gold do Indian households own?

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) added another 102 metric tonnes to the domestically held gold in the April-September period, as per a disclosure made on Tuesday.

The overall quantity of the precious metal stored in local safes stood at 510.46 metric tonnes as of September 30, which was up from over 408 metric tonnes as on March 31, 2024.

The central bank said it added another 32 metric tonnes of gold reserves in the six-month period to take the overall tonnage to 854.73 metric tonnes, as per the half yearly report on management of foreign exchange reserves.

India has been gradually moving gold reserves to local vaults -- said to be located in the financial capital and Nagpur -- over the past few years. In FY24, it had moved 100 metric tonnes more from the UK to domestic locations.

The movement of the commodity, happening at time of increased geopolitical tensions globally, was said to be one of the biggest movements of gold undertaken by India since 1991, when it had to pledge a substantial part of the gold holding to tide over a foreign exchange crisis that resulted in its movement out of vaults.

The RBI disclosure said 324.01 metric tonnes of gold were kept in safe custody with the Bank of England and the bank for international settlements (BIS) and 20.26 metric tonnes were held in the form of gold deposits.

In value terms, the share of gold in the total foreign exchange reserves increased from 8.15 per cent as at end-March 2024 to about 9.32 per cent as at end-September 2024 on the back of an increase in tonnage and also the surge in prices.

As of March this year, 413.79 metric tonnes of gold was held abroad, as per an RBI annual report.

In late May, sources had indicated that a call was taken to reduce the holding abroad that is part of the standard review procedures.

In 2009, India had bought 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after which it has been buying the precious commodity from the secondary market as part of its foreign exchange asset diversification efforts.

Typically, officials from the Ministry of Finance, the RBI and other agencies take care of the movement of gold in complete secrecy given the high value, as per the sources.