‘Gold symbolizes strength of the country’: Poland plans to add more bullion to its coffers

Poland wants to buy at least 100 tons of gold in the coming years to demonstrate the country’s economic strength, said the president of the central bank, Adam Glapinski.

In an interview with Sieci magazine, he said, “At the moment, we have 229 tons of gold, of which more or less half was bought during my term in office,” adding that the new holdings would be stored in Poland.

“This matters, among other things, for how the country is perceived,” Glapinski explained. He said in January that the share of gold in the central bank, which currently comprises 9% of the nation’s reserves, would rise to 20% during his next term.

Poland has been consistently boosting its bullion reserves in recent years, buying around 126 tons of gold in 2018 and 2019. The nation also repatriated around 100 tons of gold from the Bank of England’s vaults in London, which is around half of Warsaw’s holdings in the United Kingdom. Glapinski said back then “The gold symbolizes the strength of the country.”

Over the past decade central banks around the world, and particularly in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, have ramped up purchases of gold in a shift away from the US dollar.

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