Nagpur: More than 22% of Reserve Bank of India’s gold reserves were kept abroad at the end of March, down from about 40% a year earlier, as per RBI official data and a RTI reply received by a Nagpur resident last week.At the end of last fiscal, around 198 tonnes of RBI’s 880 tonnes of gold were kept in safe custody with Bank of England and Bank for International Settlements (BIS), according to the central bank’s half-yearly report on management of foreign exchange reserves. Another 680 tonnes were held in India, and 2.8 tonnes were held as gold deposits.Abhay Kolarkar, who filed a RTI seeking details of the reserves said, “RBI did share the reserves details, but withheld data related to cost of storage.”A year earlier, at the end of March 2025, RBI had around 349 tonnes of its 880 tonnes with Bank of England and BIS, 512 tonnes in India and about 19 tonnes as gold deposits. By the end of Sept 2025, gold kept abroad came down to around 290 tonnes. These figures are from RBI’s half-yearly reports for Oct 2024 to March 2025 and April to Sept 2025.Gold has also taken a bigger place in the country’s reserves. In dollar value, its share in total foreign exchange reserves rose from 13.92% at the end of Sept 2025 to about 16.7% by March-end, the report said.The value of gold swung sharply during the half year. It stood at around $97 billion at the end of Sept 2025, climbed every month to peak at $132 billion by Feb-end, and fell to $115 billion approximately by the end of March, the report’s monthly figures show.On the dollar side, total foreign exchange reserves fell from $700.09 billion at the end of Sept 2025 to $691.11 billion at the end of March. Foreign currency assets dropped from $579.18 billion to $552.28 billion. Excluding valuation changes, reserves fell by $30.8 billion between April and Dec 2025, against a fall of $13.8 billion a year earlier. Valuation gains of $50.2 billion, however, meant reserves in nominal terms rose by $19.4 billion during that period, the report said.Short-term debt to reserves rose from 19.7% at the end of Sept 2025 to 21.9% at the end of Dec 2025.Of $552.28 billion in foreign currency assets at the end of March, $465.61 billion was invested in securities, $46.83 billion was deposited with other central banks and BIS, and $39.84 billion was with commercial banks overseas.
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