Overview
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore launched a gold vaulting service on Nov. 10 that lets foreign central banks, sovereigns and international institutions store gold in its national currency vault with initial capacity for 500 tonnes and room to expand.
- Singapore Exchange has completed industry testing of an over-the-counter gold clearing system and named six clearing members—DBS, Deutsche Bank, ICBC Standard, JPMorgan, OCBC and UOB—to finish preparations by the end of 2026 and start live trading in Q1 2027.
- MAS and the Ministry of Finance will introduce an enhanced GST framework that waives tax on certain wholesale precious-metal services such as vaulting, refining and assaying, with the change due to take effect in April 2027.
- A DBS-commissioned Kantar survey released alongside the announcements found about half of central banks and a slight majority of asset managers and banks are more interested in Asian gold hubs, and it flagged tokenised gold as having strong growth potential despite currently representing roughly 4% of institutional gold exposure.
- The measures position Singapore in direct competition with Hong Kong, which plans to scale storage to over 2,000 tonnes and launch its own clearing and settlement system in Q1 2027, and could shift more liquidity and price discovery into Asian trading hours while giving central banks more venue options for reserve diversification.