De-Dollarization of Central Bank Reserves in the World Economy: 2015–2025

The U.S. dollar’s share in global central banks’ foreign reserves has declined slightly between 2015 and 2025. When gold is included as foreign reserves, the decline is significantly larger. We find that the average USD share in total reserves declines by 12 percent, while the gold share increases by 8 percent and other reserve assets by 4 percent. The rise in the share of gold is primarily explained by gold price appreciation. In the case of sanctioned Russia, appreciation is 78%, while physical gold accumulation accounts for 22% of the increase in the value of gold reserves. In China, 91% of the increase in the share of gold is due to gold appreciation, while only 9% is due to gold accumulation. In India, the respective proportions of active versus passive accumulation were 80% and 20%, while in Japan they were 96% and 4% respectively. Physical gold accumulation took place in China (538 metric tons), Russia (915 mt), India (322 mt) and Japan (81 mt). For Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, and Switzerland, 100% of the share of gold reserves took place passively due to gold appreciation, with no change in physical gold held. Reserve de-dollarization takes place in all ten countries, except for Switzerland, whose USD assets rose by 2% of total reserves. In most cases, de-dollarization reflects valuation effects rather than substantial reductions in dollar asset holdings.