The potential of falling interest rates and waves of economic and political uncertainty have seen gold prices reach all-time highs in 2025. Buoying up the record-high prices have been the activities of some of the world’s leading central banks. In this feature, we look at which bought and sold the most gold in 2024 based on publicly available data.
We’re only at the start of 2025, and already, gold has set a new all-time price record, hitting $2,954.69/oz last Thursday on the back of a weaker U.S. dollar. When writing this piece, the gold price has retreated slightly to around the $2930/oz mark, which is likely due to traders opting to take some profit.
However, with gold prices still within touching distance of the $3000/oz mark, the upward price trend is expected to continue. Many financial experts maintain the belief that in the not-too-distant future, we’ll see gold priced at $3500/oz, and should this happen, it will be anyone’s guess at how high it could go.
Since this time last year, gold prices have experienced a dramatic surge, increasing by an astonishing 44% in approximately twelve months and by a staggering 11% just this year. The increase has been attributed to central banks and investors seeking a safe haven, which makes perfect sense given the current economic uncertainty and geopolitical turmoil.
Although most financial headlines have focused on the buying side, some central banks have chosen to take advantage of the high prices and have decided to sell. To get a clearer picture of who the big buyers and sellers were in 2024, the team at BestBrokers kindly pointed us towards their latest data summary, which involved them aggregating gold reserves data from the World Gold Council for each month of 2024 to ascertain who were the largest net buyers and sellers last year.
Interestingly, the BestBrokers study reveals that Poland increased its gold reserves the most in 2024, adding 89.54 tonnes. In recent times, China has led the gold-buying pack. However, according to the data, the economic behemoth added only 44.17 tonnes in 2024, which was less than both India and Turkey.
When it comes to Central Banks increasing their gold reserves, it should be mentioned that China, along with Russia, are by far and away the world’s largest gold producers.
Based on my conversations with my husband Paul, I am confident that both country’s gold reserves are considerably greater than is publicly stated, and they very likely added more to their reserves than the official data will show. Paul also told me that he believes China’s publicly stated gold buying volumes are more for show purposes, as not buying a reasonable volume would raise difficult-to-answer questions.
The BestBrokers report, titled “Gold’s 2024-2025 Rally: Mapping Central Banks’ Demand for the Precious Metal in 2024”, has provided me with some interesting takeaways:
As mentioned, Poland led the Central Bank’s gold demand in 2024, with 89.54 tonnes bought. Available data shows that the country currently holds 448.2 tonnes of gold, which ranks it 13th on the list of countries with the largest gold reserves.
Like Poland, Turkiye and India also increased their gold holdings in 2024 by 74.79 tonnes and 72.6 tonnes, respectively. At the time of writing, India is ranked 8th among countries with the largest gold reserves, and Turkiye is ranked 10th with 615 tonnes of gold in its reserves.
China purchased 44.17 tonnes of gold in 2024, a 2% increase compared to 2023. This brings its publicly stated total gold holding to 2,279.56 tonnes.
The Philippines was the largest net seller of gold in 2024, disposing of 29.4 tonnes from its total holdings of 129.7 tonnes, putting it in 30th place in the gold holdings list. Other countries selling gold in 2024 were Kazakhstan, which sold 10.18 tonnes; Singapore, which sold 10.08 tonnes; and Thailand, which sold 9.64 metric tonnes, which equated to 3.95% of its total reserves.
Interestingly, I couldn’t find any data showing that the Bank of England or the UK Treasury purchased any gold to boost the country’s reserves in 2024. The UK’s gold reserves, managed by the Bank of England on behalf of the UK Treasury, are reported to be unchanged at 310.29 tonnes as of the fourth quarter of 2024. France’s Banque de France, which holds 2,437 tonnes, and Italy’s Banca d’Italia, which currently has 2,452 tonnes, also reported zero net gold purchases in 2024.
The United States made the same decision as the above-mentioned European countries, reporting no changes to its gold holdings, which stand at 8,133.46 tonnes. According to official data, the United States has the world’s largest gold reserves as of 31 January 2025. However, this figure could change following President Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s expected visit, who will be performing a governmental audit.
The BestBrokers report provides much more information on which central banks bought and sold the most. It also includes additional information not listed in this feature: a full methodology and the latest information provided to the International Monetary Fund.