Indian Households Have Over Rs 250 Lakh Cr Worth Gold
It also includes part of the gold lying idle with the temples, religious trusts and other organisations, which could roughly come around 4000 tonnes.
Chennai: Around 25,900 tonnes of household gold stocks in India have seen their value going up to a whopping Rs 250 lakh crore with the yellow metal prices rising beyond Rs 1 lakh per 10 gm. Further, the value of over 31 tonnes of gold deposited under the Gold Monetisation scheme has gone up to over Rs 30,700 crore.
As per the estimates of World Gold Council, the household gold stock is estimated to be in the range of 23,925 tonnes to 25,925 tonnes. With gold prices crossing Rs one lakh per 10 gm, the value of these stocks would range from Rs 236 lakh crore to Rs 256 lakh crore.
According to WGC and Metal Focus, which have come out with the estimate of the gold stocks, the primary component has been imports since the 1990s when the Gold Control Act was repealed. The imports have remained around 700 -800 tonnes in the past two decades.
It also includes part of the gold lying idle with the temples, religious trusts and other organisations, which could roughly come around 4000 tonnes. There are around 700 temples which own gold, including ones like Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Tirupati Tirumala temple, Vaishno Devi temple and Siddhi Vinayak temple,” finds Metal Focus.
As per reports, Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple owns around 1300 tonnes of gold and Tirumala temple 10.3 tonnes.
However, a large majority of the gold stocks is owned by Indian households. The legacy gold lying with them prior to 1990s and for centuries have under-caratage issues. A large part of them would have come out into the market as recycled gold. Besides, the RBI holds over 850 tonnes of gold as reserves.
However, the real stocks of gold could be even higher as prior to the repeal of the Gold Control Act, gold was smuggled into the country. Smuggling was rampant during the periods with high import duties.
The government had introduced the Gold Monetisation Scheme introduced in 2015 to cut the gold imports by paying interest for the gold deposited under the scheme. The scheme has received 31,164 tonnes of gold deposits till November 2024 from individuals, temples and institutions. The value of this stock is estimated to have gone up to Rs 30,763 crore with the gold prices moving up, find WGC. END
