A Trillion dollar treasure for the Indian economy

Gold has fast become the most popular investment option by Governments and investors alike, escalating prices consistently in recent years. But the recent attention apart due to the global recession, it has a legendary past. It’s the most coveted metal in human history, and many a war has been fought over it. About 165,000 tonnes has ever been mined in history and recent price surges has made even exotic kind of mining from the sea floor to the proposed asteroid mining project by Planetary Resources plausible.

India is a gold crazy country, with private reserves estimated at more than 18,000 tonnes of gold or more than the government reserves of USA, UK, France and Germany combined. However, as brought out by the recent increase in import duty and other taxes by the Indian govt. In the budget, this frenzy for this metal is a burden to the economy as investments in this doesn’t lead to a positive impact or a recirculation of funds. These huge reserves in the private hands though looked at from another perspective could be a trillion dollar hidden treasure to the Indian economy and innovative ways to leverage these assets, unlock their value and recalculate it, could be a huge boost to the Indian economy.

Though one of the possible ways to do it i.e. a thriving and transparent precious metal buying back industry is absent in India. US though having much smaller jewellery industry has a huge buying back industry spawned with pawn shops, refineries, etc where people can easily sell and liquidate their precious metal holdings. In recent years in India however a thriving gold loan industry has appeared with NBFC’s like Muthoot Finance and Banks taking the lead on this, especially in metropolitan areas like New Delhi. However, loans are not the only need of consumers, let alone the ideal solution for people seeking to leverage their jewellery assets.

In most cases people prefer to sell their old jewellery they don’t need rather than complicate things with loans, interest rates, etc. However, there are few dedicated services focusing on consumers who want to sell. There’s a new entrant in the precious metal sale market in New Delhi called Jewels Capital and hopefully more of such players will emerge in India which will facilitate the liquidation of our vast private gold holdings while enabling the consumers with a quick and trusted way to sell their old jewellery. Jewels Capital also claims to offer re-fabrication services where old jewellery can be recreated in later years through CAD/hand made techniques. They are located in New Delhi and you can find more information about them and their contact details at Jewelscapital.com

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