The National Stock Exchange (NSE), starting September 1, will facilitate settlement of future gold contracts traded on “NSE Refiner Standards for Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) - Standard Gold” platform through supply of physical gold mobilised from domestic gold refiners.
Four gold refining firms viz. Augmont Enterprises, Kundan Care Products, MD Overseas and GGC Gujarat Gold Centre have been empanelled by the NSE for the newly-crafted ‘India Good Delivery Standards,’ which aims at making Indian gold standard equivalent to an international gold standard.
Ketan Kothari, director, Augmont Enterprises, “This initiative by NSE will benefit the Indian ecosystem of recycling of gold, gold monetisation scheme of India and provide support to the local manufacturers. It will lead to better price discovery as well.”
NSE has laid down stringent process guidelines covering audits every six months (both technical as well as sourcing and process audits), testing of samples, sending samples to labs, black box testing, checking samples at the time of delivery.
Refiners need to have a robust mechanism to adhere to all these processes and to always ensure that the quality is at par with the globally accepted standards.
Vidit Garg, director, Kundan Group, said, :This initiative is an important milestone not only for the refiners but also for the entire network that operates in the Indian bullion and jewellery segment.”
It is for the very first time that the Indian gold refiners will be able to trade their gold over the NSE platforms. This initiative has come in line with the government’s efforts towards a transition to be self reliant.
Earlier, NSE used to accept only serial-numbered gold bars developed and authorised by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) for the settlement of gold contracts exchanged on the commodity derivatives section of the exchange.
According to NSE, the launch of NRS for BIS – Standard Gold – would encourage greater involvement by domestic market players in the trading of marketable bullion product as its futures the expanding reach of suitable bullion products for distribution on the platform.
Please Email the Editor