Gold imports in
value terms declined by 30.3 per cent in the April-September period of this year to $20.2 billion. During the April-September period of 2011, the gold imports had increased by 66 per cent to $29 billion.
"Notwithstanding the increase in international gold prices in 2012-13 (April-September),
gold imports have shown decline . Decline may have occurred due to increase in customs duty on gold imports by government in January and March 2012," Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena told the Lok Sabha in a written reply last week.
For the entire 2011-12, gold imports stood at $56.2 billion.
"It may be noted that the international gold prices have also increased significantly in recent years. Such
behaviour of gold prices assumes importance for building up of positive expectations of gold investors and hence might have partly contributed to the increase in gold imports in India," Meena said.
During April-September period of 2012-13, the value of gold imported by the government and public sector stood at Rs 18,026 crore and that of private sector is Rs 92,501 crore, Meena added.
In his Budget proposal in March 2012, the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had
doubled the basic customs duty on standard gold bars to 4 per cent and on non-standard gold to 10 per cent. He also imposed one per cent excise duty on unbranded jewellery.
In a separate reply, Meena said the net remittances by NRIs received in India in 2011-12 stood at $63,469 million. The net remittances received in India in 2010-11 and 2009-10 stood at $53,124 million and $51,791 million respectively.
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