World Gold Council report: RBI ranks 6th in buying gold abroad

News:The World Gold Council (WGC) recently released its report, “World Gold Outlook 2020”.

Facts:

Key takeaways from the report:

• The Gold has performed the best in 2019.Since 2010 the gold trade in dollars has increased by 18.4% in 2019.
• The Reserve Bank of India ranks 6th in buying gold abroad.Currently,it holds 625.2 tonnes of gold.This is 6.6% of the country’s foreign exchange.
• The other 5 countries that have bought more gold than India include China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Poland.
• Further,the demand for gold in 2020 for India will depend upon (a) financial uncertainty and lower interest rates (b) weakening in global economic growth and (c)gold price volatility.

Additional information:

World Gold Council (WGC)

• The World Gold Council is the market development organisation for the gold industry. It is an association of the world’s leading gold producers.
• It was established in 1987 and is headquartered in the United Kingdom.

Gold Reserves

• Gold reserves are central banks’ total holding of gold as a percentage of their foreign exchange reserves.
• WGC gold reserve data are based on International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics (IFS) which tracks central banks’ reported purchases and sales along with gold as a percentage of their international reserves.