Government takes stock of progress in gold schemes

Mumbai: The government has got down to some stock-taking of sovereign gold bond and monetisation schemes, which were launched in the first week of November with much fanfare.

Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das Tuesday interacted with members of the public and private bankers here to review the progress of the schemes.

While the first tranche of the gold bond programme ended on November 20, the monetisation scheme is still open, which has attracted only under 1 kg of gold so far.

"The meeting with the bankers was mainly to review gold monetisation and gold bond schemes and take decision wherever some tweaking is required," Das told reporters after meeting the bankers here.

At the meeting, a host of issues covering periodicity, marketing, commission to be paid to banks, reachout programmes concerning bulk holders of gold like charitable institutions and temple trusts, among others, were discussed.

In the first tranche of the gold bond scheme, the government had received 63,000 applications amounting to Rs 246.2 crore.

Das said the meeting was also to understand the kind of difficulties, challenges and problems the stakeholders are facing in implementing the gold monetisation scheme over the last 25 days.

"It is too early to pass a verdict on the success of gold monetisation scheme... We are quite confident and committed to make it a success," Das said, adding that the Finance Ministry will also write to states to support banks in this regard.

Das said the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has called for an expression of interest from all its 13,000 certified jewellers if they want to participate in the scheme. "We expect good response there," he added. 

The government is also offering a mechanism in which banks and refiners can forge an agreement for bulk gold.

On the policy review by RBI today, Das said it is "a balanced call". "RBI has maintained a very careful balance between their primary goal of maintaining inflation at check while boosting growth," he said.

In its fifth bi-monthly policy statement for 2015-16, RBI has kept key policy rates unchanged and stuck to its GDP growth forecast of 7.4 percent for the current fiscal.

On food inflation, he said, "We are watching the situation. We have to see how the rabi output and productivity are. I think it will continue to remain soft. We don't expect any hardening of inflation."