Newsletter
If someone told you India has 880 tonnes of gold, the first reaction would probably be, “That is a ridiculous amount.” And it is. But put that number next to India’s entire reserve pile and the story gets more interesting.
The RBI held 880.5 tonnes of gold at the end of March 2026. More than 77% of it was actually stored within India, after the central bank moved about 104 tonnes back from overseas vaults during the second half of FY26.
Yet gold is still only one part of India’s reserve strategy. At the end of March, gold accounted for 16.7% of India’s foreign exchange reserves, up from 13.9% six months earlier. The interesting bit is that the RBI did not suddenly load up on gold. Its holdings stayed almost unchanged at around 880 tonnes. The bigger reason was that gold prices rose, pushing up the value of the metal India already owned.
By the week ended August 21, India’s foreign exchange reserves had reached a record $729.3 billion. Of that, about $591.3 billion was in foreign currency assets and $114.2 billion in gold.
This is where the comparison with countries such as the US, Germany, France and Italy becomes fascinating. Gold makes up a far larger portion of their official reserves. India, instead, keeps most of its reserves in foreign currency assets because the RBI needs them to do more than simply preserve wealth. They provide liquidity for imports, external payments and intervention when the rupee comes under pressure.
There is another reason this matters today.
Central banks around the world have been steadily increasing their appetite for gold. The World Gold Council says central banks bought around 1,000 tonnes a year on average over the last four years, roughly twice the pace seen in the previous decade. India has been part of that broader shift, although its recent approach has been more about holding and relocating existing gold than aggressively adding to it.
So India’s 880 tonnes may look small beside America’s 8,000-plus tonnes. But the better question is not how much gold India has. It is how the RBI chooses to divide its financial safety net between gold, dollars and everything else.
