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In the two years since India took steps to pare gold imports, people used all sorts of tricks as the smuggling business boomed - from simply tucking the metal under a turban to jamming it up their rectums. That illegal trade, though, is fading now. Gold had become the most-smuggled item in India, where people consider it auspicious and a store of value, and rely entirely on foreign supply.
Government limits, including a record 10 per cent import tax, were intended to shore up a slumping rupee and reverse the country's widening trade deficit. With that gap now shrinking, thanks in large part to falling prices for oil imports, jewellers surveyed by Bloomberg expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi to cut the duty in the Budget.
Customs officers already have begun to shift their focus to other illegal imports, from foreign currency, cigarettes and electronics to turtles and rare woods.Smuggling of gold has come down because the curbs that had created an artificial scarcity are no longer there, "and we are hoping the change in duty expected in the Budget will lead to a further drop," said Kiran Kumar Karlapu, assistant commissioner of customs at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai.
