Indians hoard 20,000 tons of Gold worth 75% of India’s GDP!

We Indians love Gold.  We all know that India is the largest Gold market in the world.  But did you know how much gold we Indians keep with us?  Here is a shocker:

Indian households have piled up as much as 20,000 tonnes of gold, worth $1.16 trillion, an historic high.

How to put this in perspective?  Well just the Gold reserves itself are equal to 75% of the country’s GDP!

The World Gold Council’s (WGC) latest estimate of India’s household gold reserves is 11% higher than the 18,000 tonnes it had been pegged at earlier. Coupled with 557.7 tonnes of the central bank’s holdings, gold stocks at known sources in the world’s largest consumer would represent more than 75% of its gross domestic product.

Its a shame this Gold is just hoarded and not used in any productive way, because in that case it can add to the wealth of the country