Goldman Sachs says central banks bought 79 tonnes of gold in August
The estimate is more than four times the average pace of official buying seen before 2022.
Published
Chart: GLD, a fund that holds gold, one-minute prices, three sessions
Goldman Sachs estimates that central banks bought 79 tonnes of gold in August, a pace well above the 17-tonne average the bank calculates for the years before 2022.
The figure sits apart from other tallies of the same month. The World Gold Council put net central bank gold buying in August at 39 tonnes, with China adding 20 tonnes and Poland and Uzbekistan each adding eight, according to World Gold Council data reported by goldsilver.com. Goldman revised its own model this year after concluding it had understated central bank buying since August 2025, a gap it traced to a mismatch between falling London vault inventories and official UK trade figures, according to Goldman Sachs research reported by Kitco News. In June, the bank's seasonally adjusted three-month estimate put monthly buying at 100 tonnes, up from 66 tonnes in May, according to Goldman Sachs research reported by idnfinancials.com.
Goldman analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven attribute the elevated pace to reserve diversification, as central banks increasingly see gold as less exposed to being frozen than foreign-currency reserves, a shift that gathered pace after G7 countries froze Russian central bank assets in 2022, the bank said. Goldman forecasts gold will reach $4,900 a troy ounce by the end of 2026, up from about $4,600 in late August, citing central bank demand and reduced expectations of further US rate increases.
August's pace keeps official buying running at more than four times its pre-2022 norm, extending a stretch that has continued through a year marked by banking stress, strain in AI-linked financing and shifting speculation over Fed leadership. Buying at that scale is harder to dismiss as a single month's noise, and because it sits outside investor positioning and futures flows, it offers gold a steadier floor than the swings tied to equity or credit sentiment seen this autumn in names such as Goldman Sachs and CoreWeave.