Will gold remain most trusted metal after demonetisation?

With people moving towards 'digitalisation', Kothari believes that sales of only coin on e-commerce sites will shoot up.

As per Kothari, demonetisation announcement has opened a "plethora of opportunities". Photo: Reuters

With the demonetisation move, trust on gold as the last resort will go up, Prithviraj Kothari, MD of RiddhiSiddhi Bullions said.

As per Kothari, demonetisation announcement has opened a "plethora of opportunities" in case of gold and jewellery sector this could potentially change the rules of the traditional game played, but not short of a painful period.

"A lot of consumption will move towards purchase of white goods, cars, homes and vacations. The only silver lining would be for the people with very low income group who are dependent on loans against gold. These people will be able to avail of such loans at a lower interest cost," Kothari said.

"Excise duty on jewellery had helped build momentum in terms of jewellers getting their act together in maintain their books and paying taxes, though it is still a long way to go. Nevertheless, with short of options and with GST coming in force, the complete industry will be forced to run the business in a highly transparent way", Kothari said.

With people moving towards 'digitalisation', Kothari believes that sales of only coin on e-commerce sites will shoot up because a lot of people still do not prefer buying it online.

What next for gold after demonetisation?

According to Kothari, now the government should get more households to demonetise gold at centres like banks & NBFC branches, jewellery stores, hallmarking centres and refineries.

Kothari said, "In the current scenario where the fixed deposit rates are lowering, a decent return on monetised gold will really encourage people to bring the gold out of the lockers. If the annual imports of India are around 1000 tonnes of gold, the government should target reducing it to 400 tonnes".

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