India Owns the World’s Largest Private Gold Pool. In Ten Years, the State Pried Loose One-Sixth of One Percent.
THE 0.16% PROBLEM India Owns the World’s Largest Private Gold Pool. In Ten Years, the State Pried Loose One-Sixth of One Percent. A $1.4 trillion hoard, a decade-long scheme to unlock it, and a quiet 2025 admission of why it failed. The numbers tell a story the press release does not. Mystic Quill · Research & Analysis by Selva Ganesh K · Reflecting the record as of mid-2025, with a 2026 update at the close. Start with the number that ends the argument. India’s households and religious institutions hold an estimated 23,000 to 25,000 tonnes of gold, worth about $1.4 trillion, according to the World Gold Council. It is the largest private store of gold on Earth — larger than the official reserves of the United States, Germany, and the IMF combined. In 2015 the Indian government launched a scheme, the Gold Monetisation Scheme, explicitly designed to draw that idle metal into the financial system. Ten years later, in a written answer to Parliament, the Min...