SGB New Series: The Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme was launched in the year 2015 with the aim of promoting digital gold. Then this scheme was discontinued in Budget 2025. Now the government has given a big update in Parliament about whether this scheme will be restarted.
SGB New Series: Reserve Bank of India’s gold scheme – Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme has been discontinued. Due to the huge jump in gold prices in the last few years, it was becoming difficult for the government to continue this scheme. Meanwhile, some media reports started a stir that whether the government is starting a new series of Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme again? The government has given the answer to this question in Parliament. The Finance Ministry says that reducing the cost of borrowings before launching a new series is their priority.
In fact, the Sovereign Gold Bond Scheme was started in 2015 with the aim of promoting digital gold. In this scheme, the government used to give investors an opportunity to buy gold at cheap prices. According to the RBI website, its maturity was 8 years. SGB had a fixed interest of 2.5%. Apart from this, whatever the price of gold increases in 8 years, the same benefit was available. Tax was levied on the interest earned under SGB. However, if maturity was completed, the capital gain was considered tax free.
Know what is the government’s strategy on SGB scheme
The Finance Ministry has clarified that it will decide on issuing the next installment of SGB by adopting a ‘prudent debt management strategy’. This means that the government will not re-launch the scheme without thinking, rather it will be seen how much the cost of government borrowing is increasing due to this. While answering the question in Parliament, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said that the government is trying to reduce the cost of borrowing.
He further said that while considering the issuance of new installments of SGB, it is very important to keep the cost of debt in mind. Let us tell you that the last series of Sovereign Gold Bond (Series IV 2023-24) was issued in February 2024. Since then, gold prices have seen an increase of more than 70%.
How much gold is there in India?
The Minister of State for Finance, citing a report of the World Gold Council ‘Gold Investment Market and Financialisation’, said that Indian households and religious institutions have about 23,000 to 25,000 tonnes of gold, which is worth about $1.4 trillion. At present, the government will take a careful decision on the next installment of SGB, giving priority to the cost of debt. The rising prices of gold have given strong profits to investors.
