Last year, some decisions regarding gold were taken in the budget which were called the dark day in the history of gold. On July 23, 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman suddenly reduced the import duty of gold from 15 percent to 6 percent, due to which there was a huge fall in the prices of gold. It was because of this decline that it was called a black day.
You can estimate this decline from the fact that before the budget, the price of gold was around Rs 82,000 per 10 grams. After the news of import duty coming down from 15 per cent to 6 per cent, in the next 7 to 10 days the rate of gold fell by about Rs 6000 to Rs 76,000 per 10 grams. However, in a country like India, where there is a lot of demand for gold, it is difficult for gold to remain cheap for long.
According to a report by the World Gold Council, Indian women have about 24,000 tonnes of gold. This is 11 percent of the total gold in the world. And interestingly, Tamil Nadu has the highest amount of gold in India. That means, about 28 percent of India’s total gold is in Tamil Nadu alone. Last year, when the Narendra Modi government was formed for the third time, the full budget was presented on July 23.
What will be in the budget this year?
In such a situation, a speculation is also being made whether the government can take some such decisions this year also which will have an impact on the gold price. However, this time no demand has been made by the industry regarding import duty.
Rajesh Rokade, Chairman of All India Gems and Jewelery Domestic Council (GJC) has put forward some of his demands. Their demand is that like gold, silver should also be hallmarked. So that the purity of silver can also be ensured.
A big demand for cash in the bullion market is regarding hallmarking. He says that like hallmarking of gold jewellery, there should be hallmarking in the bullion market also. This means that gold bars or gold coins should also have a hallmark.
Hallmark indicates the purity of gold. It is generally believed that gold bars and coins are pure i.e. 24 carat, hence at present there is no hallmark on them. But now the industry demands that both of them should also be hallmarked.
Demand to reduce GST
A big demand of the gems and jewelery industry is to reduce GST on gold. At present, 3 percent GST is levied on the total rate of gold jewellery. Whereas the demand of the industry is that it should be reduced to 1 percent so that the business can get support.