India

Tirupati temple undecided over moving gold stash under Gold Monetization Scheme

Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which manages the world’s richest Hindu temple of Sri Venkateswara Swamy, has not decided yet on moving its stash gold under the recently launched Gold Monetisation Scheme of the central government, a top official of the Board said.

“We are evaluating different things. There is an existing high-level investment committee which will take a decision. Based on that, TTD will take a decision on participating in Gold Monetisation Scheme,” TTD executive officer Sambasiva Rao told PTI.

Gold Monetisation Scheme is purely voluntary says Finance Ministry

In a statement, Finance Ministry on Saturday said that the objective is to monetise the idle gold held within the country and promote financial savings.

Ministry said good part of the Scheme will also be made available to meet domestic requirement of gold.

This will help in reducing our gold imports and save foreign exchange and deal with the problem of the current account deficit Last month, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan had spoken of the need for some fine-tuning of the scheme.

The country has over 20,000 tonnes of idle gold worth over 52 lakh crore rupees with households and institutions.

When contacted, Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, Finance Minister of Andhra Pradesh, said the TTD is an independent body and does not require any “directive” from the government.

“They do not need any directive from the Government. They can take independent decision. If TTD asks our permission we will certainly give,” the minister said.

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