ICICI, Yes Bank to offer gold monetisation scheme

After the Prime Minister launched the idea to monetise country’s idle gold reserves, YES Bank launched the gold sovereign bond from its major branches across the country.

It is in the process of fine tuning its launch of the gold monetisation scheme, the mid-sized lender said in a statement.

Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO, YES Bank said, “I applaud this much needed, far-sighted initiative that is timed very well to coincide with the Gold buying festive season of Dhanteras and Diwali. The Gold Schemes will have important ramifications for the economy. The consumer will benefit from market expansion as financial substitutes for physical gold would be made available with simplified access. At a macro level, it will unlock savings in unproductive physical assets and thereby help channelize financial savings towards more productive investments. It will also develop expertise in local hallmarking which would drive demand for Made in India Gold both locally and internationally.”

To help fine tune the scheme, the bank has also given recommendations such a creation of more collection and purity testing centres overcoming concentration of household gold and gold buying propensity from Western and southern states of India and thereby also building a certified hall marking centres in the other regions.

It added that the Government could introduce a suitable slab-based disclosure basis the amount deposited.

Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank said, “The launch of the gold schemes is an important step towards unlocking $800 billion of the country’s gold wealth. The sovereign gold bond scheme serves as an effective financial investment instrument and still provides the benefits that Indian consumers usually buy physical gold for. This will help to rebalance the profile of household savings from more traditional forms of gold purchase towards a more productive form. The gold monetization scheme will constitute a new source of income for households for whom the metal served as a passive investment earlier, yielding no return. This also has the additional benefit of reducing storage costs and eliminating security concerns."

The bank will accept applications for the sovereign gold bonds scheme at all its branches and customers can apply on the ICICI Direct platform as well.

Apart from this, pursuant to the government’s notification, ICICI Bank has also identified one branch for the Medium and Long Term Government Deposit Scheme.

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