A growing number of countries are bringing their physical gold reserves back home to avoid Russian-style sanctions on their foreign assets, while increasing their purchases of the precious metal as a hedge against high levels of inflation.

Central banks globally made record purchases of gold in 2022 and into the first quarter of this year, as they hunted for safe havens from high inflation and volatile bond prices, according to a survey of sovereign investors by asset manager Invesco. China and Turkey together accounted for almost one-fifth of these purchases.

Concerned by the decision by the US and others to freeze Russian assets, central banks opted to buy physical gold rather than derivatives or exchange traded funds that track the metal’s price.