OREANDA-NEWS  The world's central banks increased gold reserves by 32.7 tons in April, according to a preliminary assessment by the World Gold Council (WGC), cited by Interfax.

The volume of replenishment of gold and foreign exchange reserves by regulators has more than doubled compared to the data for March this year. This happened despite a sharp decrease in the acquisition of precious metals by China (from 5 to 1.9 tons).

Turkey again turned out to be the leader in gold purchases (7.9 tons), India (5.6 tons), Poland (4.7 tons), Singapore (4.2 tons) and Russia (3.1 tons) also entered the top 5. At the same time, its total sales amounted to only 2.9 tons.

According to WGC analyst Krishan Gopol, April statistics show that the world's central banks have "digested" the rally in gold prices and continue their strategic course to replenish their reserves. One of the reasons for this trend was previously called the desire to de-dollarize reserves and increase the share of gold in them as an alternative to the dollar against the background of sharply increased US government debt.