The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued an official statement here on Wednesday stating that reports appearing in a section of the media claiming it sold a portion of its physical gold reserves recently to stabilise the Indian rupee are “not correct”.
File Photo: IANS
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued an official statement here on Wednesday stating that reports appearing in a section of the media claiming it sold a portion of its physical gold reserves recently to stabilise the Indian rupee are “not correct”.
According to an RBI press release dated June 3, 2026, issued by its Chief General Manager Brij Raj, “The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come across reports in certain sections of the media about the RBI’s sale of gold. The RBI emphasises that these reports are ‘not correct’.
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“In this context, it is clarified that the physical stock of gold is disclosed by the RBI in its Monthly Bulletin. The physical stock of gold remains unchanged at 880.52 tonnes as of date,” the central bank clarified in its press release.
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The Press Information Bureau (PIB) FactCheck also tweeted on its official X handle on Wednesday, “A news report published by Bloomberg states that the RBI may have sold gold amounting to approximately USD 12 billion. This claim is fake. According to the RBI, the share of gold in India’s foreign exchange reserves rose from 13.92% at the end of September 2025 to 16.70% on March 31, 2026, and further to 16.85% as of May 22, 2026.”
According to a report published on Tuesday by Bloomberg Economics, quoting its senior economist for India, Abhishek Gupta, “The Reserve Bank of India likely sold $12 billion of its gold reserves and bought $7.5 billion in foreign currency assets during the two weeks ending May 22”.
Bloomberg Economics economist Abhishek Gupta supposedly used publicly available data to infer that “the RBI appears to have offloaded a substantial portion of its gold holdings to shield its foreign currency assets from the cascading fallout of the war in the Middle East”.
“The purported sales underscore policymakers’ concerns about the pressure India is facing from sustained capital outflows and higher oil prices as the Iran war and effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz drag on. They also show the RBI is prioritising reserves of liquid foreign currency as a wider current-account deficit weighs on the rupee,” the Bloomberg Economics report had stated.
According to the report, “RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra is weighing all options available to stabilise the Indian rupee, including an interest-rate hike and raising US dollars from investors overseas”.
“The RBI’s interventions in the foreign exchange markets have had some effect, helping the rupee outperform most peers in Asia since May 20, when the currency fell to an all-time low. The rupee was down 0.2 per cent to 95.17 on Tuesday. India is the world’s third-largest oil importer, and the nation is burning through foreign currency as the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz drive up its energy costs and weaken the currency,” the report stated.
Gupta also said in his assessment, “The RBI will likely continue rebuilding its foreign exchange reserves to the degree they can. Periods of dollar weakness, renewed foreign-capital inflows, or lower oil prices would create opportunities to add to foreign currency assets.”
“At the end of March, the RBI held 880.52 tonnes of gold, of which 77% was held domestically, with most of its overseas holdings stored at the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), according to the RBI’s latest foreign exchange report from April,” the Bloomberg Economics report stated on Tuesday.
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