In one of the most profound developments in the central bank gold market for a long time, the Hungarian National Bank, Hungary's central bank, has just announced a 10 fold jump in its monetary gold holdings. The central bank, known as Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) in Hungarian, made the announcement in Budapest, Hungary's capital.

The details of Hungary's dramatic new gold purchase are as follows:

Before this month, Hungary's central bank held 3.10 tonnes of gold.

During the first two weeks of October, the Hungarian National Bank purchased 28.4 tonnes of gold.

This gold purchase raised the central bank's gold holdings from 3.1 tonnes to 31.5 tonnes, i.e. a 1000% or 10-fold increase.

The Hungarian central bank had not altered its gold reserves since 1986, i.e. 32 years ago.

The 28.4 tonnes of gold was purchased in 'physical form', and 'its repatriation has already taken place' to Hungary.

Interestingly, Hungary now holds the same amount of gold as it held 70 years ago.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-16/hungarian-central-bank-stuns-announces-10-fold-jump-gold-reserves

In addition to this new Hungarian gold purchase, Reuters is reporting that updated data from the IMF shows that Poland continued to increase its gold purchases in September 2018, raising its gold reserve holdings by 4.4 tonnes during the month to 117 tonnes. This follows similar gold purchases that the Polish central bank made in the summer, when the bank bought two tonnes of gold in July and seven tonnes of gold in August.

With almost all of Poland's gold held at the Bank of England, a relevant question now is how long before Poland also sees fit to repatriate its gold in physical form away from the fractionally-backed LBMA controlled gold trading centre of London. Another of Hungary's close neighbors, Austria, has itself spent the last 3 years repatriating 140 tonnes of its gold from the Bank of England in London and has nearly completed this repatriation operation now.

Add to this the high-profile Germany Bundesbank gold repatriation program in recent years, and a similar gold repatriation exercise from the Netherlands central bank, and the trend is clear: central banks in Europe have been flocking to shore up their international reserves with gold, because, as in the words of the Hungarian central bank "Gold is still considered to be one of the world's safest assets".