Niti Aayog panel mulls ways to revive failed gold monetisation scheme

Options include involvement of jewellers, getting over the reluctance of banks and loans from GMS deposits

Efforts are on to revive the government's Gold Monetisation Scheme (GMS), a proven failure in the two years since its launch.

The aim of the GMS was to mobilise the gold lying idle with households, estimated by the World Gold Council to be about 25,000 tonnes or almost half the country's gross domestic product. However, the scheme hasn't even been able to attract 10 tonnes since its launch by the Prime Minister in November 2015. And even this has mostly been from temples, not homes. Here again, several temples had only renewed deposits maturing under the earlier scheme of the year