Breaking News: India Hikes Gold & Silver Duty to 15% to Protect Forex Amid West Asia Crisis

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]And for more on this we have Sharma Mishra joining us from Mumbai on the phone line. Well Sharma the import duty on gold and silver has been increased.

[00:00:08]Uh what is going to be the effect on the immediate effect on the market?

[00:00:14]>> Well Nepaki uh the idea is to safeguard macroeconomic stability and conserve foreign exchange reserve uh also reducing pressures on the current account deficit on the markets. We obviously will see uh uh this impact but the uh the entire uh sentiment uh looms over the gold and all the precious metal industry because India is the second largest uh where the gold is the second largest import when it comes to India and this is after crude oil. So obviously on in this particular section in this particular sector we will definitely see a lot of impact over here and gold silver platinum they largely consume uh they are largely uh people's investment driven or consumptiondriven uh items and this will definitely increase uh the outflow which this increases the in outflow of the foreign exchange. So to safeguard that definitely this particular decision this particular uh announcement will be useful and this will as we were mentioning earlier this will also conserve the forex reserves because that is also important uh citing the global uncertainty and west Asia crisis the ongoing geopolitical tensions that has created a lot of volatility in rural prices and the shipping routes which has increased the risks for uh import dependent economies which is like India.

[00:01:38]So all this our money is really going out and rupee the depreciation of rupee is also hurting uh the sentiments and also hurting the uh you know the uh government over some at many places. So managing entire situation and because this is uncertain not knowing how long will this crisis be ongoing or how severe it can become uh it is best to take decisions now to prevent situations uh from deteriorating further and that is why we will be seeing the impact wherein people will themselves be avoiding purchasing of heavy golds uh heavy jewelry and this will be largely impacting the bride idol or the wedding season where people would be now choosing for lighter jewelry or even recycled gold. uh they would be you know now taking out their uh parents or their grandmother's jewelry out and not purchasing heavy uh jewelry the newer heavy heavy jewelry but definitely the impact would be also on the jewelry industry where the gold sellers or the heavy metal sellers they would be bearing the brunt of this but uh all this is to safeguard the uh interest and we would be seeing a lot of these austerity measures would be helpful in economy and the economic situation for India.

[00:03:01]>> Absolutely.