First ever filming of Singapore’s Gold Reserves in secret vault: What did it discover?

Singapore’s gold reserves have a market value of approximately SGD 18.8 billion, which represents less than 5 percent of MAS’s total reserve assets that are worth about SGD 400 billion. (Original Image credit: Channel news asia (CNA))

Channel News Asia (CNA), a news channel in Singapore, published a documentary in August about Singapore’s national reserve assets, including its famous monetary gold reserves. According to a report by BullionStar, the CNA documentary team obtained access to the 'secret' gold vault in the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank, where more than half of Singapore’s official gold reserves are stored.

This is the first time ever that Singapore’s gold reserves have been filmed inside the MAS central bank gold vault.

BullionStar is Singapore's premier and one of the leading bullion dealers in South east Asia.

MAS holds 225.4 tonnes of gold and is the 24th largest sovereign gold holder in the world.

Up until March 2021, MAS held 127.4 tonnes of gold. Then, MAS went on a gold buying spree and bought 26.4 tonnes of gold bars between April and May 2021, and then another 73.6 tonnes of gold bars between January and July 2023, the report said.

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Singapore’s gold reserves have a market value of approximately SGD (Singapore Dollar) 18.8 billion, which represents less than 5 percent of MAS’s total reserve assets that are worth about SGD 400 billion.

The rest of the reserve assets of the central bank are also along with the 225.4 tonnes of gold, managed by MAS, the report further added.

Documentary Insights

In the beginning of the CNA documentary titled - “Singapore Reserves: The Untold Story | Singapore Reserves Revealed”, the narrator states that Singapore’s central bank granted the CNA team exclusive access to the MAS secret gold vault, on condition that CNA signed an undertaking to keep the location of the vault secret.

The undertaking invokes Singapore’s Official Secrets Act and was signed by CNA documentary producer and crew.

The opening shot shows the CNA producer standing in a large open plan vault space among towering racks of steel trays that contain large Good Delivery (400 oz) gold bars.

According to the narrator of the documentary, “each tray contains up to 20 gold bars and each bar is worth close to $800,000."

As per the report, there are two rows of gold bars stacked back-to-back, with 11 stacks in one row and 12 in the other row. Then there is a corridor, and there is one stack positioned at the end of this corridor. Additionally,  there are two more rows of stacks, each 11 stacks long. Then there is a corridor and one final row of stacks (10 stacks long) to the right. But within this corridor there have been placed another 7 stacks. In total that is 64 stacks of trays.

The CNA video shows a vault which appears to hold 128 tonnes of gold bars, and hence MAS recently showed its holding all of the historical 127.4 tonnes of gold which Singapore purchased many years ago.

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