India to set up gold board for spot exchanges

Mumbai: A gold board will be created by an act of Parliament to, among other things, regulate gold spot exchanges, said two persons aware of the development, after a meeting between Pahle India Foundation — a not-for-profit policy think-tank founded by Rajiv Kumar, vice-chairman, Niti Aayog — and stakeholders, including MCX, NSE and BSE and their clearing corporations on Monday.

Spot exchanges are a part of a comprehensive gold policy announced by FM Arun Jaitley in the Union Budget for FY19. The policy aims at making gold an asset class. Spot exchanges will help in this by creating greater transparency in pricing and quality of gold. The Indian gold market is largely unorganised, where customers don’t always get the best of pricing and quality.

“Regulated spot exchanges will make the trade more transparent and benefit the customer, apart from facilitating creation of an Indian quality standard for gold. This will ensure recycled gold refined finds its way to the exchanges and reduce imports of the metal,” said one of the persons.