Russia has been buying gold for forty months in a row: 21 tonnes in January

The central bank of Russia has a lot of gold out of the market again in January Passed. In total, she bought 700,000 troy ounces of gold, which is the equivalent of 21.77 tonnes. With this purchase, the total size of the gold stock increases to 1,437 tonnes. Expressed in dollars, the yellow precious metal represented 13.83% of the Russian central bank's total reserves in January.

January was the fortieth month in a row in which Russia added precious metal to its reserves. The country is currently ranked sixth in the ranking of countries with the largest gold reserves, according to IMF figures. In December Added Russia also added more than 21 tonnes of gold to its reserves.

Russia keeps buying gold

Gold as a percentage of total reserves Russia

Central banks continue to buy gold

"Central banks see gold as a strategic asset and as a means to diversify", so concludes Vincent Kersten of Hollandgold. "The fact that central banks of large countries such as China and Russia Buy gold says something about the growing distrust of the dollar system."

In addition to Russia, Kazakhstan also added gold to its reserve in January. In January, their inventory grew by 100,000 troy ounces to 7.2 million troy ounces. Compared to a year ago, their gold holdings have increased by 1 million troy ounces.

Also China added gold to its reserves in January. The People's Bank of China bought an additional 16 tonnes, bringing its total reserve to 1,778 tonnes. We wrote an article about this earlier this month on Hollandgold.

More demand for gold

It's not just central banks that are positive about gold. Due to negative interest rates and the lower growth forecast of the global economy, more and more private investors and savers are also seeing the value of gold. While stock prices have fallen sharply this year, the Gold price increase by 15%. As a result, investors are getting back into gold ETFs and we are seeing the popularity of gold bars and gold coins increase.

According to figures from Bloomberg About $4 billion flowed into ETFs holding physical bullion in February. This was the largest one-month increase since July 2011. We also saw a significant increase in the demand for precious metals at Hollandgold this month.