(MENAFN) India’s central bank has brought back a considerable portion of its gold stored in overseas vaults, driven by concerns over the West freezing more than "$300 billion in Russian sovereign and private assets."

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has notably increased the proportion of its gold reserves held domestically, repatriating roughly 64 tons of the precious metal during the first half of the current fiscal year (April-September), according to its half-yearly report on foreign exchange reserves.

By the end of September, the RBI’s total gold holdings stood at 880.18 metric tons, with 575.82 metric tons kept within India.

Of the remaining stock, 290.37 metric tons were stored with the Bank of England (BoE) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), while 13.99 metric tons were maintained as gold deposits.

The South Asian country has been gradually retrieving gold from abroad, as reflected in RBI data.

In October of the previous year, the central bank moved 102 tonnes of gold from the BoE and BIS. Another 100 tonnes were repatriated in May—a process described by analysts as one of the largest gold relocations since the 1990s.

A primary motivation for bringing gold back is linked to G7 nations freezing Russia’s foreign exchange reserves following the intensification of the Ukraine conflict.

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