New Delhi: The Commerce Ministry is planning to introduce a comprehensive gold policy, CNBC-TV18 said citing a NewsRise report. According to a ministry official, the gold policy will likely suggest a gold board for overseeing the gold and jewellery sector. “The Commerce Ministry will seek shareholders’ inputs on this policy by June and submit a proposal to the Finance Ministry by August,” the official added.
Earlier this year, Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Venugopal Reddy said the government needs to roll out a comprehensive ‘gold policy’ owing to its role in the economy and to handle the precious metal in a better way. “It is time we have a positive approach to policy for gold.There must be positive comprehensive gold policy and I believe it is so important for the economy that so many people are dependent on it,” he said. He also maintained that gold is the ultimate currency in the world, though domestically possessing it is part of Indian culture and for women, it acts like insurance.
Meanwhile, the Modi government has taken a lot of steps to formalise and better monitor gold trading in the country. Hallmarking of all precious metals has been made compulsory since last year from Diwali. The government also launched a gold scheme and made PAN number compulsory for purchases of gold jewellery worth more than Rs 2 lakh. All these steps show the seriousness of the government in making gold a commodity.
Not only this, the finance ministry is also formulating a policy to auction gold deposited with banks under the monetization scheme. This will pave the way for the purchase of the precious metal by jewellers and will also mark the complete rollout of the scheme that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November 2015 to trim imports and check current account deficit.
