Estimated above-ground holdings
A model that attributes funds, bullion, jewellery and silverware across all 195 sovereign states.
- Shown with directional uncertainty ranges
- Country attribution is evidence graded
- Industrial silver in use is excluded
Methodology
How silver per-capita comparisons are calculated.
The main worldwide comparison estimates above-ground holdings across 195 countries. Separate views show annual mine production and underground reserves from the U.S. Geological Survey. These measures answer different questions and should not be treated as the same kind of silver.
01
Define the quantity before ranking it
Silver does not have a country-level official-reserves dataset parallel to monetary gold. IMF reserve-asset guidance treats silver bullion as a good, not an official reserve asset.
Annual mine production
Silver content produced by mines in one year. It is a flow and does not imply that the metal remains in the producing country.
- Observation year: 2025
- All 2025 values are USGS estimates
- Recycling and refinery output excluded
Underground reserves
An estimate of economically recoverable silver under current technical and economic conditions.
- Geological stock estimate
- Not refined or resident-owned silver
- Missing USGS values remain null
Per-person formulaestimated or source tonnes x 1,000,000 / population
This produces grams per resident. Fine troy ounces are a secondary display unit calculated as grams / 31.1034768. The ranking always uses the unrounded derived value.
02
Why the USGS comparison covers 14 countries
The 2026 USGS Silver summary lists 14 countries individually, then groups the rest as “Other countries” and gives a rounded world total. Only individually listed countries can be compared per person.
Aggregates stay out
“Other countries” and “World” are kept in the downloadable source snapshot for checking totals, but neither is treated as a country in the comparison.
No invented coverage
Countries not individually named by USGS are omitted from the USGS comparison. A missing reserve value stays unavailable and is never treated as zero.
03
Population uses one documented policy
Every measured row uses the UN World Population Prospects 2024 medium-projection estimate for mid-year 2025 resident population. Source and population years therefore match.
04
The worldwide holdings comparison is an estimate
Production and underground reserves do not measure the silver already held in funds, bullion, jewellery or silverware. The main country comparison estimates those above-ground stocks across 195 countries and shows directional ranges instead of false precision.
View the worldwide comparison05
Source and licence policy
USGS-authored information is in the U.S. public domain, with attribution requested. The Silver Institute is not used as a source for these country estimates. Its material remains a contextual reference only unless reuse permission is confirmed.
Open the USGS source