The Hindu Business Line : STC plans to take part in gold futures trading

THE State Trading Corporation (STC) is making arrangements to take part in futures trading through commodity exchanges spurred by the modest success of its retail marketing in bullion.

The Corporation's Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Dr Arvind Pandalai, told Business Line that the arrangement to take part in gold future tradings was to cushion the company from gyrations in the yellow metal prices.

He said for the first time, STC was venturing into retail marketing of gold coins in partnership with Pamp SA, Switzerland. The latter is one of the world-class refiners of gold. He said the brand "Pamp" was accredited by the London Bullion Market Association and the it was also one of the approved assayer with the distinction of "Referee Assayer" to distinguish the purity of gold.

To start with, he said, STC would sell 5 g and 10 g gold coin with logo of Goddess "Lakshmi". Subsequently, the coins would be sold with insignia of STC, he said adding that the first consignment of 15 kgs (1000 coins of 5 g and 1000 coins of 10 g) had arrived on Thursday.

After assessing the feedback and marketability, STC would go the whole hog in selling various denominations of coins ranging from 1 g to 50 g and 100 g bars also. This would be followed by retail marketing of gold from different centres including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkatta and Mumbai.

STC had plans to appoint distributors across the country in order to increase the volume of retail gold coins business, Dr. Pandalai said.

Being one of the officially nominated agency for import of gold/silver since 1996-97 under the then Export-Import (Exim) Policy, officials of the STC said the company had imported gold worth Rs 103 crore in 1999-2000, Rs 132 crore in 2000-01, Rs 667 crore in 2001-02, Rs 1473 crore in 2002-03 and Rs 5540 crore last fiscal.

During the first half of the current fiscal (April to September), the company's gold import amounted to Rs 3500 crore.

Stating that STC extends several value-added services to promote gold imports, the officials said the company had set up in-house facility of "vault" at its headquarters here to undertake "stock and sale of gold from off-the-shelf".

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