The earlier attempt to push Indian gold consumers to deposit their idle gold holdings with the bank failed to yield much and thus in the interim budget 2019 due to be announced in few days, the government is expected to provide new push to gold schemes with some tweaks and new products.

Among the new products being considered, govt. is looking at likely introducing a gold savings account wherein the customers will be able to make deposits in rupees and customers will get credit in grams of gold. For the deposit, customers may have the RD facility and a passbook will be on offer.

Also operational changes shall be proposed in such gold monetization schemes. The government is also likely to mull over providing hedging facility against any price risk associated with SGBs. In the recent time, it was seen that the subscription price for SGBs was higher than their price in the secondary market.

More so, there can be proposal to reduce the tenure of SGBs which is currently a long eight year term to offer more flexibility to investors.

For the gold savings account, the depositor can invest for a minimum of 1gm in rupee terms and redemption shall also be available in rupee terms, basis the amount of gold held in the depositor's account. Furthermore, there shall be an option to hold every quality of gold. An interest rate at 2.25% for the 3-5 year investment will be paid at par with other gold monetization schemes.

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