Singapore has launched a gold vaulting service for foreign central banks, opening its national currency vault to overseas gold reserves for the first time. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the service on Tuesday, 10 November, as part of a wider push to build the city-state into a leading gold trading centre for the Asia-Pacific region.

The vault can store up to 500 tonnes of gold, with room to expand as demand grows, MAS said. The service is open to foreign central banks, international financial institutions and sovereign entities, which will be able to hold their gold reserves in Singapore as an alternative to established vaults in London, New York and Switzerland.

What the new vault service offers

The service will provide secure, allocated custody of gold, along with access to gold-market liquidity during Asian trading hours. MAS will also offer gold custody accounts to selected Singapore-based bullion banks with experience in gold services and trading liquidity, so they can serve the institutions using the vault.

Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, who is also Minister for Trade and Industry and chairman of MAS, said several central banks had already expressed interest in the service, although he declined to name them because the discussions were confidential.

He stressed that Singapore was not trying to displace other gold centres. "It's not a zero-sum game," he said, describing the vault as an additional option for central banks looking for alternative places to store their reserves.

Tax relief for the wholesale gold trade

Alongside the vault, MAS and the Ministry of Finance announced an enhanced tax framework for the wholesale gold market. From April 2027, goods and services tax will not be charged on services between institutional participants, including vaulting, refining, recasting, assaying and broking. Further details will be announced at Budget 2027.

The changes are designed to lower the cost of trading and storing gold in Singapore and to attract more institutional business to the city-state.

A gold clearing system to follow

Singapore is also preparing an over-the-counter gold clearing system, developed by SGX Group with six founding clearing banks: DBS, Deutsche Bank, ICBC Standard Bank, J.P. Morgan, OCBC and UOB. MAS said industry testing had been completed and the system was expected to be ready by the end of 2026, with live trading and market operations beginning in the first quarter of 2027.

SGX is also targeting the second quarter of 2027 for the launch of physically deliverable gold kilobar futures, adding another tool for institutions trading gold in Asian hours.

Why central banks want more options

Demand for gold as a reserve asset has grown rapidly, as central banks look to diversify their holdings amid geopolitical uncertainty. Gan said that growing demand had prompted central banks to seek alternative storage venues to strengthen the resilience of their reserves.

Singapore is not alone in chasing the business. Hong Kong has also been pushing to expand its bullion storage and develop the city as an international gold trading centre, with plans to increase total storage capacity to more than 2,000 tonnes by 2030.

For Singapore, the vault adds to commercial storage capacity in the city-state that already exceeds 2,000 tonnes. The combination of central-bank vaulting, tax relief and a new clearing system is intended to give the country a full gold-market offering, from storage to trading, in Asian time zones.