(Image source from: India’s demand on gold uprising})

India's gold demand has increased by 22% in the last quarter of the financial year 2014 - 15 to 150.8 tonnes. This is along with a 6% fall in investment-related gold demand, which is at 40.9 tonnes, according to the data released by the World Gold Council in the report regarding demand trend for the quarter ended March 31, 2015.

“India’s gold demand during the first quarter of 2015 was up 15 per cent compared with the corresponding quarter last year, though it is still below the 5-year average. This growth is a reflection of the muted demand in the same period as last year due to crippling gold import policies, coupled with weak economic sentiment and trade uncertainty at the time of the general elections,” WGC Managing Director, India, Somasundaram PR told. "Every quarter is going to be higher than the previous ones this year because GDP growth is expected to be higher and gold prices have come down," he added.

"Due to certain restrictions, sales of bars and coins have faced a lot of headwinds and a part of investment demand has moved to jewellery," said Somasundaram. He said, following the partial removal of the import curbs (with the exception of a duty reduction) and the Budget announcements introducing new gold products, the environment for gold has been encouraging in the past few months, resulting in buying behaviour slowly returning to normalcy.

By Premji