Economic Survey 2013: High inflation has added to the gold demand

NEW DELHI: The Economic Survey for 2012-13 has a special box on the high gold consumption. It points out that the global financial crisis caused a flight to safe heaven assets. Global gold prices, as denominated in US$, doubled from their levels in since 2008, and three times as denominated in Indian rupees.

In case of India, a big consumer of gold, the high inflation has added to the demand. It points out that way to address this is through making financial instruments more attractive and curbing inflation.

A new chapter in Survey 2012-13

The survey tries to answer the question in the minds of India's young population: 'Where will my job come from?'

The Survey notes that India is creating jobs in industry but mainly in low productivity construction and not enough formal jobs in manufacturing, which typically are higher productivity.

The high productivity service sector is also not creating enough jobs. As the number of people looking for jobs rises, both because of the population 'dividend' and because share of agriculture shrinks, finding more jobs will become important.