Germany has fastened the process of retrieving gold which was sent to foreign countries after the World War 2. In the past three years, the Central Bank Of Germany has successfully managed to retrieve 642 tons of gold from US and France. In 2013, the German Government had announced a policy of keeping 50% of gold  in the Country from the available gold reserves. Germany has 3,381 tons of gold reserves and ranks second in the list of countries having maximum gold.

Advertisement

During the  Cold War phase, Germany had moved 98 percent of its gold reserves into foreign banks. As per information received in the year 2013, 1536 tons of gold was with US Federal reserves, 450 tons with Britain, and approximately 374 tons was kept in French banks. However, the German people made an aggressive demand that the gold belonging to Germany need not be kept for safe keeping in other countries but must be kept in Germany . Bowing to this request the Central Bank of Germany presented a plan to bring back 50 percent of the gold from the other countries to the Motherland by 2020.

As per the policy the process of bringing gold back has begun in the past four years and by the end of the year 2016, 48 percent of gold had been brought back to the country, informs the Central Bank ‘Bundesbank’. For this reason, the ‘Bundesbank’ official claim that by the end of 2017 itself, 50 percent of gold would have safely arrived in Germany. Even after the process of bringing 50 percent gold back is complete, a huge amount of gold would still be permanently in reserve in US and Britain, informs the Bank. Accordingly, 1236 tons of gold would be at the ‘Federal Reserve’ in the city of New York, in US,  while 432 tons of gold  would be kept with the ‘Bank of England’ in Britain.

It is a matter of surprise that a plan which was to have completed in 2020 was speeded up and the gold was brought back in three years time. The German authorities have refused to disclose additional information on this. However some analysts and economists consider issues such as ‘Euro‘ related uncertainties, political power transfer in US, and the changing political winds in Europe are the reasons. Even after ‘Brexit’, Germany has allowed her gold reserve to be kept permanently in Britain, while deciding to  retrieve  her gold reserve from France. This in a way has  increased  the suspense.

In the past few years, excluding US, the gold transactions in many developed nations are on the increase, it is said.

China and Russia specially, are said to have increased their gold reserves abundantly. Only three years back, a country like Holland in Europe, brought its gold worth 122 tons back home from US. With this background, Germany bringing its gold back home is equally striking.