PM Modi Urges Indians To Avoid Gold, Foreign Travel For A Year As Import Bill & Rupee Face Pressure

追加: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Prime Minister Modi made an appeal that has the entire nation talking asking to not buy gold for 1 year, postpone foreign travel, and also just work from home. The appeal comes in at a time when there is a war in Iran, rise in crude oil prices, and of course pressure on the Indian rupee. Of the total import bill in FY26 at $775 billion, India's gold import bill was $72 billion, which is 10% of the total import bill. Gold in past has been bought because of higher returns it gave on investment which are now 35% of all the gold bought. So, when you look at the imports, well, that is what we've seen in last 5 or 6 years. Anywhere between 600 to 800 tons of gold gets [music] imported. Now, when you talk about this year itself, Jan was almost 100 tons, and then Feb saw a decline to 66, March was down 20 [music] tons, April at a record low of 10 to 15 tons, and May perhaps could be even lower. And this is [music] happening because one, there has been a delay in sense of the licenses that you got from the authorities, and then authorized banks were [music] also slight of delayed, and gold is not getting imported. And then, industry is making [music] appeal to the PM to not bring in policy like increase in import duty or hike in >> [music] >> GST. That, of course, would be negative for the industry, which would impact lakhs of carrigers, MSMEs, and jewelry businesses.