The Gold (Control) Act, 1968 | |
---|---|
Parliament of India | |
| |
Citation | Act No. 45 of 1968 |
Territorial extent | India |
Assented to | 12 June 2006 |
Commenced | 1 September 1968 |
Repealed | 6 June 1990 |
Repeals | |
The Gold (Control) Repeal Act, 1990 (Act No. 18 of 1990) | |
Status: Repealed |
The Gold (Control) Act, 1968 is a repealed Act of the Parliament of India which was enacted to control sale and holding of gold in personal possession. High demand for gold in India with negligible indigenous production results in gold imports, leading to drastic devaluation of the Indian rupee and depletion of foreign exchange reserves to alarming levels. Devaluation of the Indian rupee also leads to steep rises in food commodity prices due to costlier petroleum products imports. In these circumstances, the gold import policy of India aimed at curbing the gold imports to a manageable level time to time by imposing taxes and legal restrictions.
Post-Independence, the foreign exchange drain was accentuated in 1962 during the border dispute with China. Morarji Desai, then-Finance Minister of India, came out with Gold Control Act, 1962, which recalled all gold loans given by banks and banned forward trading in gold. In 1963, the production of gold jewellery above 14 carat fineness was banned. In 1965, a gold bond scheme was launched with tax immunity for unaccounted wealth. All these steps failed to yield the desired result. Desai finally introduced the Gold Control Act, on 24 August 1968, which prohibited citizens from owning gold in the form of bars and coins. All existing holdings of gold coins and bars had to be converted into jewelry and declared to the authorities. Goldsmiths were not allowed to own more than 100 g of gold. Licensed dealers were not supposed to own more than 2 kg of gold, depending upon the number of artisans employed by them. They were banned from trading with each other. Desai believed that Indians would respond positively to these steps and stop consuming gold and help conserve precious foreign exchange. New gold jewellery purchases were either recycled or smuggled gold. This legislation killed the official gold market and a large unofficial market sprung up dealing in cash only. The gold was smuggled in and sold through the unofficial channel wherein, many jewellers and bullion traders traded in smuggled gold. A huge black market developed for gold. Goldsmith were an unorganised labour force and could not cope with the new developed situation. Only a few could get the licence to hold the gold, that also in very small quantities, with the result that the members of the Sunar caste, who depended only on their traditional occupation of making gold ornaments, lost their business and their financial condition deteriorated and families shattered.
In 1990, India had a major foreign exchange problems and was on verge of default on external liabilities. The Indian Government pledged 40 tons gold from their reserves with the Bank of England and avoided defaulting by securing a loan to recover. Subsequently, India embarked upon the path of economic liberalization. The era of licensing was gradually dissolved. The gold market also benefited because the government abolished the 1962 Gold Control Act on 6 June 1990. [2] by Finance Minister Madhu Dandvate and liberalized the gold import into India on payment of a duty of Rs.250 per ten grams. The government thought it more prudent to allow free imports and earn the taxes rather than to lose it all to unofficial channel. [3] From official imports of practically nothing in 1991, India officially imported more than 110 tonnes of gold in 1992, which now stands about 800 tonnes in a year.
In September 1999, the Govt. of India launched a Gold Deposit Scheme to utilize the idle gold and simultaneously give a return to gold owners and reduce the country's reliance on imports. However, this plan was not widely accepted by the population.
Gold ETFs are also operating in India from March 2007. Alarmed by the excessive gold imports by Indians despite the public holdings of gold is in excess of 30,000 metric tons, Indian Government introduced a new Gold Deposit Scheme with attractive benefits to the gold depositors in the year 2015 to recycle the available idling gold in the country for meeting internally the entire fresh ornamental gold demand. [4] Government of India has nearly 550 tons of gold reserves which would help in kick starting the scheme.
When the inflation adjusted gold value is examined, gold is not an inflation hedge but crisis hedge. [5] [6] Some times, gold price apparently looks lower in US$ value but its price compared to corresponding crude oil price can be exceeding 25 times far higher than long term average of 15 times. [7] In April 2020, one ounce of gold fetched more than 90 barrels of WTI crude oil in USA in the mid of Covid 19 pandemic as gold price shot up to 1788 US$/ounce. Thus during the lower oil prices period, gold acts as crisis hedge to overcome the loss of revenue from oil exports to the oil exporting countries. When oil prices are higher, it acts as crisis hedge to the oil importing countries to dispose oil stocks at profit and purchase gold with the accrued cash for replenishing oil stocks later during the lower oil price with respect to gold price. [8] With the advent of shale oil production boom in USA, crude oil for the first time is being realistically priced in US$ irrespective of quantitative easing in USA and the agreement of USA with OPEC to transact their international crude oil exports in US$. [9] [10] [11] However international gold price is fixed by the major gold importing countries like India as gold market is fully buyers market with global gold stocks amounting to 300 times of its annual consumption or 53 times of its annual production. [12]
In India, when the agriculture production is good, it will lead to slump in the agriculture commodity prices and raise in gold price due to demand from rural areas. Similarly, when agriculture commodity prices raise due to less production, gold prices would depress by lack of demand from rural areas. [13] During good monsoon years, Indian government can sell its gold reserves at higher price catering to the gold demand from rural areas, to finance the surplus food grains purchase obligation at minimum support price (MSP) and the supply of adequate imported fertilizers to farmers. The depleted gold reserves could be purchased back later at lower price during the subsequent bad monsoon years with the funds after selling the food grain stocks at higher price to make up shortfall in the production. This analogy can be applied to all commodities and gold can be termed as super commodity with characters of international currency. [14] Thus Indian Government or Reserve Bank of India can overcome the economic crisis by effectively managing / hedging the gold reserves vis a vis food grain stocks or fertilizer stocks or crude oil stocks.
Gold trading daily turnover in the international commodity exchanges (NYMEX, TOCOM, HKMEx, DGCX, etc.) is of the order of 300 tons/day (nearly 110,000 tons/year) compared to 3,000 tons/year global production. [15] However, most of the trades are squared off without actual delivery. [16] India being the dominant importer of gold, Indian government can exercise full control on international gold trading when all its gold imports and recycled gold are channeled through it and distributed through the commodities exchanges of India. [17] [18]
India imports in excess of 1000 tons annually (including unofficially smuggled gold) with negligible local production. [19] The annual gold imports are around 50 billion US$ next only to crude oil imports widening the trade deficit. [20] In the years since 2001 to 2015, the official net gold imports are 269 billion US$ whereas the Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) invested only 157 billion US$ in Indian equities. [21] Gold imports cost is nearly 3% of the GDP. Alarmed by the huge trade deficit in the year 2012, GoI introduced moderate customs duty (below 10%) on gold imports. Though the policy is fetching good customs income, the imports demand is not drastically coming down. It is due to the reason that world gold demand is mainly driven by Indians and its price is fixed by Indians in Indian rupees. Imposing customs tax on gold imports in India or devaluation of Indian currency, led to the softening of its international price but remained range bound in rupee terms. Customs duty imposition also led to increase in gold smuggling but narrowed the trade deficit to permissible limit as the smuggled gold would not get accounted as imports in trade deficit calculations. [22]
The gold imports are also serving to channelise undeclared earnings by exporters and importers of India. Invariably, exporters under invoice their exports whereas importers over invoice their imports to stash black money in tax haven countries. This stashed money abroad is routed to India by importing gold (official channel or smuggled) which can be disposed off in to Indian rupees as gold commands insatiable demand from rural India. [23] This multiple malpractices by importers and exporters artificially widen the official trade deficit by three folds of the actual trade deficit subjecting Indian currency constantly at the risk of devaluation and de-rating of India by international rating agencies. [24] It is estimated that unnecessary gold imports are retarding growth of Indian economy by at least 3% points. [25] The customs duty forgone during the financial year 2013-14 on non-essential gold and diamonds import is Rs 48,635 crores which is constituting 16% of the total customs duty forgone. [26]
The economy of Chad suffers from the landlocked country's geographic remoteness, drought, lack of infrastructure, and political turmoil. About 85% of the population depends on agriculture, including livestock herding. Of Africa's Francophone countries, Chad benefited least from the 50% devaluation of their currencies in January 1994. Financial aid from the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and other sources is directed mainly at improving agriculture, especially livestock production. Because of a lack of financing, the development of oil fields near Doba, originally due to finish in 2000, was delayed until 2003. It was finally developed and is now operated by ExxonMobil. Regarding gross domestic product, Chad ranks 147th globally with $11.051 billion as of 2018.
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.
The Indian rupee is the official currency in India. The rupee is subdivided into 100 paise. The issuance of the currency is controlled by the Reserve Bank of India. The Reserve Bank manages currency in India and derives its role in currency management based on the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.
In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national currency in relation to a foreign reference currency or currency basket. The opposite of devaluation, a change in the exchange rate making the domestic currency more expensive, is called a revaluation. A monetary authority maintains a fixed value of its currency by being ready to buy or sell foreign currency with the domestic currency at a stated rate; a devaluation is an indication that the monetary authority will buy and sell foreign currency at a lower rate.
Of all the precious metals, gold is the most popular as an investment. Investors generally buy gold as a way of diversifying risk, especially through the use of futures contracts and derivatives. The gold market is subject to speculation and volatility as are other markets. Compared to other precious metals used for investment, gold has been the most effective safe haven across a number of countries.
The history of the rupee traces back to ancient times in the Indian subcontinent. The mention of rūpya by Pāṇini is seemingly the earliest reference in a text about coins. The term in Indian subcontinent was used for referring to a coin.
The price of oil, or the oil price, generally refers to the spot price of a barrel of benchmark crude oil—a reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Brent Crude, Dubai Crude, OPEC Reference Basket, Tapis crude, Bonny Light, Urals oil, Isthmus, and Western Canadian Select (WCS). Oil prices are determined by global supply and demand, rather than any country's domestic production level.
An importer is the receiving country in an export from the sending country. Importation and exportation are the defining financial transactions of international trade. Import is part of the International Trade which involves buying and receiving of goods or services produced in another country. The seller of such goods and services is called an exporter, while the foreign buyer is known as an importer.
Taxation of salt has occurred in India since the earliest times. However, this tax was greatly increased when the British East India Company began to establish its rule over provinces in India. In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. When the Crown took over the administration of India from the Company in 1858, the taxes were not replaced.
The 2000s commodities boom or the commodities super cycle was the rise of many physical commodity prices during the early 21st century (2000–2014), following the Great Commodities Depression of the 1980s and 1990s. The boom was largely due to the rising demand from emerging markets such as the BRIC countries, particularly China during the period from 1992 to 2013, as well as the result of concerns over long-term supply availability. There was a sharp down-turn in prices during 2008 and early 2009 as a result of the credit crunch and European debt crisis, but prices began to rise as demand recovered from late 2009 to mid-2010.
The economic liberalisation in India refers to the series of policy changes aimed at opening up the country's economy to the world, with the objective of making it more market-oriented and consumption-driven. The goal was to expand the role of private and foreign investment, which was seen as a means of achieving economic growth and development. Although some attempts at liberalisation were made in 1966 and the early 1980s, a more thorough liberalisation was initiated in 1991.
The Great Depression in India was a period of economic depression in the Indian subcontinent, then under British colonial rule. Beginning in 1929 in the United States, the Great Depression soon began to spread to countries around the globe. A global financial crisis, combined with protectionist policies adopted by the colonial government resulted in a rapid increase in the price of commodities in British India. During the period 1929–1937, exports and imports in India fell drastically, crippling seaborne international trade in the region; the Indian railway and agricultural sectors were the most affected by the depression. Discontent from farmers resulted in riots and rebellions against colonial rule, while increasing Indian nationalism led to the Salt Satyagraha of 1930, in which Mahatma Gandhi undertook marches to the sea in order to protest against the British salt tax.
The 1991 Indian economic crisis was an economic crisis in India resulting from a balance of payments deficit due to excess reliance on imports and other external factors. India's economic problems started worsening in 1985 as imports swelled, leaving the country in a twin deficit: the Indian trade balance was in deficit at a time when the government was running on a huge fiscal deficit.
The 2009 Union budget of India was presented by the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, on 6 July 2009.
The Inland Customs Line, incorporating the Great Hedge of India, was a customs barrier built by the British colonial rulers of India to prevent smuggling of salt from coastal regions in order to avoid the substantial salt tax.
Inflation rate in India was 4.83% as of April 2024, as per the Indian Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. This represents a modest reduction from the previous figure of 5.69% for December 2023. CPI for the months of January, February and March 2024 are 5.10, 5.09 and 4.85 respectively. Inflation rates in India are usually quoted as changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), for all commodities.
The BIS Haulmark is a hallmarking system for gold as well as silver jewellery sold in India, certifying the purity of the metal. It certifies that the piece of jewellery conforms to a set of standards laid by the Bureau of Indian Standards, the national standards organization of India. India is the second biggest market for gold and its jewellery.
The petroleum industry in India dates back to 1889 when the first oil deposits in the country were discovered near the town of Digboi in the state of Assam. The natural gas industry in India began in the 1960s with the discovery of gas fields in Assam and Maharashtra. As on 31 March 2018, India had estimated crude oil reserves of 594.49 million metric tonnes (Mt) and natural gas reserves of 1339.57 billion cubic metres of natural gas (BCM).
India–Venezuela relations are the international relations that exist between the Republic of India and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Economic history of Ghana details the economic situation of Ghana since pre-colonial times to date.