For the second time in this fiscal year, government is set to launch the next tranche of Sovereign Gold Bonds or SGBs on July 10 for subscription. The application for the bond offering 2.5% annual interest shall remain open from July 10 to July 14. Investors will get interest on a semi-annual basis on the investment value. The eligible applicants will get the bonds issued on July 28.

The tenure of the bond is 8 years with the option to exit from the investment from the fifth year on the interest payment date. SGB issue can be subscribed to by payment in cash (with an upper limit of Rs. 20,000), demand draft, cheque or net banking.

As per the statement issued by the Finance Ministry, the issue price of the gold bonds shall be Rs 50/gm less than the nominal value. Sovereign Gold Bonds were introduced by the Narendra Modi government in the later part of 2015 to reduce import of the precious yellow metal which disturbs trade balance of the country immensely. Through its latest issue, government aims to garner a total of approximately Rs. 5000 crore from all the three gold schemes in this fiscal.

Minimum subscription can be made for 1 gm of gold while the maximum that an investor can invest is capped at 500 gms in a fiscal year. In a case when an entity or an individual invest in the maximum allowed quantity, a self-declaration will be obtained. When the SGBs are held jointly, then the upper limit for investment i.e. 500 gm applies only to the first applicant.

The price of SGBs shall be fixed in rupees basis the simple average of the closing price of gold of 999 purity that is published by the India Bullion and Jewellers Association from Monday to Friday just before the subscription period.
The major stock exchanges, including, BSE and NSE, SHCIL or Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd., designated POs and banks shall be offering the SGBs. Bonds shall be traded on stock exchanges as per the date informed by the RBI.

The capital gains realized on redemption of these SGBs are exempt from capital gains tax. Nonetheless the benefit of indexation shall be offered to any individual making long-term capital gains from SGBs. These gold bonds are allowed to be used as collateral for a loan. The loan to value ratio has to be fixed at par with ordinary gold loan decided by RBI time and again.

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