Central Banks, Sovereign Wealth Funds Are Buying Gold, and Keeping It Close

July 12, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—This year’s Global Sovereign Asset Management Study, the annual survey of the holdings and stratagems of nearly 60 central banks and even more sovereign wealth funds by the Invesco investment firm, caught the eye of London’s Reuters news service and Financial Times. Not surprisingly, between the impact of inflation and Western economic sanctions, central banks carried out record gold purchases in 2022 and the 1st quarter of 2023. (China, Turkiye, Singapore, India and “Middle East” countries are the only names given in these press accounts.)

No surprise: The survey also found that a “substantial share” of the central banks surveyed, are not only purchasing gold, but keeping their gold reserves at home, after the precedent of Russia seeing half of its reserves seized under Western sanctions. Only 50% held their gold at home in 2020; now 68% of the central banks surveyed are doing so. Bank of England holdings of other central banks’ gold has dropped by 12% since 2021—a surprisingly low drop, considering that the Bank of England stole Venezuela’s gold reserves which it had been storing at the BOE, a robbery upheld by the British courts when Venezuela sued.