Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has bought 48% of all the gold that the central banks bought in October, adding a whopping 27 tonne to its home reserves, taking the total tonnage to 882. Gold buying by all central banks totalled only 60 tonne in October, shows the latest data from the World Gold Council (WGC).

The RBI has purchased as much as 77 tonne of gold between January and October, according to the data, based on the reported monthly numbers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Gold had touched its historic high prices in October crossing the $2750/ounce mark and the buying happened the historically highest prices—may be prices skyrocketed due to the demand from central banks. The October purchase represents a five-fold increase compared to the same period of 2023, said the WGC. With this purchase the country’s total gold reserve stood at 882 tonne, of which 510 tonne are held in the country and the rest are mostly in the London, Zurich and New York.

The RBI has been on a gold-buying spree between April 2022 and September 2024 when it added close to 100 tonne to the reserves.

Between January and Septemebr, the central bank had bought 24 tonne, taking the total to 854.73 tonne. At the end of March 2024, the reserves stood at 822.73 tonne, which was only 760.42 tonne in March 2022. This means the RBI had lapped up 94.31 tonne since then and September 2024. In the whole of 2023, the gold reserves went up by 16 tonne, making RBI the second biggest central bank buyer of the yellow metal. In terms of overall forex reserves (dollar terms), gold is worth 9.32% in September 2024, up from 8.15% in March 2024.

The Council further said emerging market central banks continued to dominate the market with Turkey and Poland adding 72 tonne and 69 tonne, respectively, till October 2024. Which means these three central banks accounted for 60% of the total global net purchases reported this year. Till the first half of this year , the Chinese central bank had led the bullion buying spree.