Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. In an unprecedented move, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recalled 100 tonnes (about 1 lakh kg) of gold from Britain. A special aircraft was used to bring the gold. This is the first time since early 1991 that so much gold has returned to India's reserves. RBI held a total of 822.1 tonnes of gold at the end of March 2024, of which 413.8 tonnes were deposited abroad. RBI has been one of the central banks buying gold in the past few years. Owing to this, 27.5 tonnes of gold has increased in the Reserve Bank's gold reserves in the last financial year. Extensive planning was done to bring 100 tons of gold to India and the whole plan was successful. Local authorities were involved along with the Ministry of Finance, RBI and other wings of the government. This step will also help the RBI to save some of the storage costs, which it used to pay to the Bank of England. However, this amount is not so big.

Within our country, gold is kept in the old Reserve Bank office building on Mint Road, Mumbai. Apart from this, gold storage is also done in vaults in Nagpur with full security. RBI holds gold not only in India but also abroad. Central banks of all countries want to keep gold in different places, so that the risk can be reduced. First of all, safety of gold is kept in mind. If India's economic situation is not favourable, or due to the disaster or political instability, then to mitigate the uncertainty, the gold is stored in foreign countries. Therefore, the risk is reduced by keeping gold in separate places. Britain's Bank of England has traditionally been the repository of gold for many central banks. Some of this gold has been stored in London since before India's independence, because before independence, Britain kept India's gold in the Bank of England.