Between January and March this year, our current account deficit was around $32 billion. The value of RBI's gold in mid-March was $26 billion. India imports around 800 tonnes gold annually. So, in one stroke, we could cut the annual import of physical gold by 70% and the quarterly current account deficit by 80%.

Is it enough? May be not, but it will certainly be a start. It will have the added benefit of keeping a lid on the global gold market, where jewellery demand from India is still the single biggest pull factor. Read More

Jyothi Shankaran

    Jyothi’s last role was as Senior Editor with the business news channel Bloomberg TV India. He also worked as News Editor at business-standard.com, the online version of the business newspaper Business Standard. Jyothi is a chemical engineer from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar.