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Singapore’s Central Bank Quietly Boosts Its Gold Reserves By 30%

Song Hong

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In January 2023, Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) returned to gold buying again, adding a massive 44.6 tonnes of gold to its official reserves, and thereby boosting Singapore’s gold holdings from 153.8 tonnes to 198.4 tonnes.

In percentage terms, this gold buying represents an incredible 29% increase in Singapore’s gold holdings in just one month. In fact, this is Singapore’s second largest largest gold purchase ever in one month, the only gold purchase that was larger was when Singapore first bought 100 tonnes of gold from South Africa in 1968.

In a typically discreet fashion, MAS did not announce its recent gold buying via press release or via any other publicity. It merely updated the data on its website in the latest version (end of January) of a monthly report called ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’.

This is the second major gold buying spree by Singapore’s MAS in less than 2 years. The last time Singapore added to its monetary gold reserves was over a 2-month period between May and June 2021, when it bought 26.35 tonnes of gold over the two months, of which 16.4 tonnes was in May 2021 and 9.95 tonnes in June 2021. Those additions took Singapore’s gold holdings from 127.42 tonnes to 153.76 tonnes.

Prior to May-June 2021, Singapore had held 127.42 tonnes of gold, a figure which had not changed since at least 2002 (as far back as World Gold Council records go). 100 tonnes of this total had been purchased by Singapore in one transaction in 1968 (while attending a World Bank meeting in Washington D.C), and the other 27.42 tonnes was added at other undefined times between after 1968 but before 2002.


 

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