Tirupati Temple To Be The Biggest Contributor To Modi’s Gold Scheme?

The gold monetization scheme launched by the Modi government may get its richest and biggest client soon. This scheme was launched in a bid to persuade individuals, organizations and wealthy temples for depositing some of their gold piles with the bank for recycling purpose. This scheme aims to use the gold which is lying unused and reduce the imports which are hurting the Indian economy.

This scheme may get the Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple as its biggest client as it may contribute more than 5.5 tonnes of gold. Sri Venkateswara temple is popularly known as Tirupati temple and as per the belief it is the house of Lord Venkateswara for 5,000 years.

Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, the finance minister of AP said, “It’s a good scheme. We have already issued a directive to go for the scheme.”

After China, India comes second in terms of the consumption of gold, and its high consumption makes imports necessary which are 28% of the trade deficit for the year ending March 2013.

The tradition of offering gold ornaments and coins to God by the devotees is in place since centuries and most of the temples do not say a word about their gold stocks.

Major part of gold stock of Tirupati temple is already deposited in various banks under other schemes which offer 1% interest, D Sambasiva Rao, the executive officer who manages the temple has this to say, “They (temple investment committee) will evaluate and whichever scheme is beneficial we are going to do that,” adding that they can move all the gold to this scheme if it seems beneficial and the decision will be made in 10-15 days. Not to forget that this scheme offers interest at the rate of 2.5% annually.

He further said temple is offered one tonne of gold per year and if the decision is made in the favour of scheme than all of it will be deposited in the scheme.

However, Lord Ganesha’s 200 years old Shree Siddhivinayak temple of Mumbai doesn’t seem interested in the scheme, the reason being the practice of banks in which it is necessary to melt down the gold before depositing, which may result in loss of weight due to impurities.

On Friday, a statement was issued by Finance ministry which said that the scheme, “will help in reducing our gold imports and save foreign exchange and deal with the problem of current account deficit.”