publication
2025-04-07 14:00
After March purchases, the share of gold in Polish foreign currency reserves exceeded the target level of 20%. The National Bank of Poland probably already has nearly 500 tons of gold.
Based on the NBP reports published at the beginning of each month on official reserve assets at Bankier.pl, we calculate how the reserves of the Golden Central Bank changed. According to the latest data, at the end of March, the “Monetary Gold” position at the NBP was valued at $ 49.84 billion.
This gives almost 15.973 million ounces – according to Bankier.pl calculations., or by 530 thousand ounces more than at the end of February, when 15.443 million ounces were officially reported. After the reserve of the National Bank of Poland They increased last month by 16.5 tons and reached the size of 496.81 tons.
However, we must wait for the official confirmation of these calculations until April 18, when the NBP publishes the statistics of liquid assets and liabilities in foreign currencies.
We would like to remind you that in February, the National Bank of Poland made the largest monthly golden purchases since June 2019, increasing its ownership by nearly 29 tons. In addition, in January, Polish gold reserves increased only by 3.11 tonnes. However, throughout 2024, the NBP bought nearly 90 tons of royal metal. A year earlier, the NBP bought about 130 tons of “barbaric relic”. Over the past two years, Polish ore reserves have been increased by 220 tons and another 48.6 tonnes in the first three months of 2025.
Mr. President, we check the task
According to already published data, at the end of March 2025, gold was already 21% of Poland's foreign exchange reserves. NBP President Adam Glapiński publicly announced in 2021 that the bank's goal is to achieve a state in which gold is 20 percent. of the total foreign reserves of Poland.
In this way this goal was achieved. In part, this happened due to the large bullion purchases carried out by the NBP, and partly due to the strong appreciation of gold relative to the dollar and other fiducinent currencies. Only from the beginning of 2025, gold prices expressed in USD went up by over 15%, at the beginning of April setting a new nominal record of all time. In 2024, the dollar quotations of the “barbaric relic” increased by 27.2% after the increase by 13.2% a year earlier, almost doubled over the last 5 years.
After February purchases, the Polish Central Bank already has gold reserves slightly smaller than those reported by the European Central Bank. Recent data shows that ECB has 506.5 tons of yellow metal, i.e. less than 10 tons more than NBP.
NBP activities are part of a global and trend that has been going on for several years. After 2008, Western central banks suddenly stopped selling gold reserves, which they got rid of for the previous 20 years. The royal metal on a significant scale began to buy developing countries – primarily China, Russia, India, Türkiye and Kazakhstan. In 2018, Poland and Hungary joined this group, making the first in 20 years of gold in the European Union. The purchases of gold from the monetary authorities further intensified after March 2022, when the rule of Western countries “frozen” Russia's currency reserves deposited with them.
