Record-breaking purchases of gold by central banks of different nations were observed during the first quarter of 2023.
Editor’s Note: Seriously, buy gold now if you have the means.
The World Gold Council (WGC) disclosed this finding in its latest report, noting that demand for the metal from central banks worldwide reached 228 metric tons (MT). This was a 176 percent increase compared to the 82.7 MT from a year prior. “This is all the more impressive, considering it follows the record-breaking pace of demand last year,” the WGC said.
ZeroHedge reported that the gold purchases amounted to “the strongest first quarter on record.” It also noted that the central banks of several countries were among the buyers for that quarter.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which serves as the central bank for the Little Red Dot, took the No. 1 spot for its 69 MT of gold purchased this quarter. The purchase marked the first increase of its gold reserves since June 2021. The MAS now has a total of 222 MT in its gold reserves, 45 percent higher than at the end of 2022.
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), Mainland China’s central bank, disclosed a 58 MT addition to its existing gold reserves. It has added 120 MT to its gold reserves since resuming reports of gold purchases in November 2022, for a grand total of 2,068 MT. (Related: MORE METAL: China’s public gold holdings now over 2000 tons after another huge purchase in December.)
China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange also revealed in its April 2023 reserves data report that the country’s gold reserves rose to a record 66.76 million ounces (oz) at the end of April. China’s reserves amounted to 66.5 million oz at the end of March.
The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (TCMB) also saw its official reserves rise by 30 MT to a total of 572 MT, despite several sales. A sale in March, the first since November 2021, offset a combined purchase of 45 MT in January and February. The TCMB also sold 15 MT of gold into the local market following a temporary partial ban on gold bullion imports.
The Reserve Bank of India also purchased a modest seven MT in the first quarter to increase its gold reserves to 795 MT. The Czech National Bank purchased two MT, while the Central Bank of the Philippines bought one MT.
Several countries also sold the yellow metal to other nations
ZeroHedge also noted that gold sales for the first quarter of 2023 were “much more modest” by comparison.
The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) took the No. 1 spot for gold sales during the quarter, selling off 20 MT from its reserve. The Central Bank of Uzbekistan (ORMB) followed at No. 2 after it sold 15 MT of gold. According to the WGC, it is not uncommon for central banks that purchase gold from domestic sources – such as the NBK and the ORMB – to be frequent sellers of gold.
The National Bank of Cambodia sold 10 MT of gold from its reserves during this quarter. Meanwhile, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates and the National Bank of Tajikistan each sold one MT from their gold reserves.
Aside from these, ZeroHedge also reported about the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) resuming its reporting of gold reserves. Its filing encompassed the period from the end of January 2022 to date.
According to the CBR report, Russia’s official gold reserves fell by six MT to 2,327 MT. However, this decline was but a drop in the bucket as the country’s current gold reserves are 28 MT higher than when it stopped reporting last year.
Meanwhile, the National Bank of Croatia reported a loss of two MT in its gold holdings in January. Croatia dropped the kuna, its national currency, and adopted the euro as a currency that month.
However, this gold was simply transferred to the European Central Bank – which is mandatory for all countries adopting the euro as currency. Thus, Zagreb’s transfer of gold to Brussels does not represent a decline in the global gold reserves.
Watch this clip from the “Flyover Conservatives” podcast about gold purchases by central banks being at their highest level since the 1950s.
This video is from the Flyover Conservatives channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
- Central banks continue to stockpile gold as recession looms.
- Central banks all over the world are buying gold at a furious pace.
- Central banks continue their streak of accumulating more gold in 2023.
- WGC report: Central banks extend gold buying streak in preparation for currency uncertainty.
- Central banks continue adding gold to their net holdings as fears rise of a global currency collapse.
Sources include:
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
