Analysis Of The Gold Monetization Scheme

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1. In the fiscal year 2015-16, the finance minister of India, Arun Jaitley announced Gold Monetisation Policy in India. Under the Gold Monetisation Scheme, the customer can deposit their gold and earn interest on it. The objective of this scheme was to mobilize the estimated 20,000 tonnes of Gold in hand with the households of the country and in different places in different forms. The reason being gold investments in India is mostly an ‘unproductive asset’. The stocks of gold in India are estimated to be over 20,000 tonne (worth over Rs. 60 lakh crore) but most of this gold is neither traded nor monetized. Secondly, it is aimed to reduce the quantity of gold being imported by India, which stands as second largest imported commodity after …show more content…

The present scheme is an improvement over the previous version in various respects. A stark difference can be seen in their objectives. GDS: To mobilize the gold held by households and institutions in the country whereas the Monetisation focuses on mobilizing the gold held by households and institutions , to mobilise and put the gold into productive use and the long-term objective to reduce the country’s reliance on the import of gold to meet the domestic demand. GDS was highly criticised for its infrastructure because of its reliance on the existing infrastructure with banks and government mints, whereas under the new scheme Banks will be freed from handling physical gold and concentrate on their expertise of banking operations, private sector will be engaged for refineries and engage collection centres that are BIS certified. Under the new scheme the deposited gold is proposed to be used for: Auctioning, replenishment of RBI’s gold reserves , coins and for lending to jewellers. While in the old system utilization of gold was not clearly specified in the scheme. The new scheme seems to be a right step in the right direction as the mobilized gold will supplement RBI’s gold reserves and it will help in reducing the …show more content…

A major setback can be the mere fact that Indian consumers attach a high degree of emotional value to their gold holding, especially traditional jewellery. It can be very difficult to convince them to get over the cultural nuance attached to gold in India, for just 2-3% of interest rate. Indian families give too much importance to the traditional and cultural value of the gold and they keep on passing the ornaments or any other form of gold from one generation to the next generation, and it doesn’t generally happens with the maintenance of the record of the metal. So, the most of household gold in India are unaccounted. Also, the process of purification testing and assaying of gold is a cumbersome process both for the consumer as well as the bank. While rural India possess a good chunk of domestic gold deposit, thereby refineries located at urban & sub-urban centres may create logistic problems for the rural consumers. The MoF has proposed Know Your Customer (KYC) fulfilment for depositing gold, which can be a deterrent, in case of incremental scrutiny by the Income-Tax Department on deposited gold. Also majority of the consumers may not possess the original bill or voucher of the jewellery which in many cases can be inter-generational & archaic, thus posing additional roadblock in case of documental evidence for gold holdings are sought by the

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