India now has its own standard bar of gold that is 99.99% pure and can be used to verify the purity of gold sold in shops. Despite India being one of the largest markets for gold, goldsmiths so far depended on imported reference gold bars to check the purity of their biscuits, coins and jewellery.
Called the Bharatiya Nirdeshak Dravya (BND 4201), the bar, weighing 20gm and with the dimensions of a ‘Parle-G’ biscuit (in the words of a scientists associated with its development), will mean that Indian jewellers will no longer need to import gold bars to check the purity of ornaments.
Last November, the India Government Mint (IGM), a unit of Security Printing and Minting Corp of India Ltd, signed an agreement with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to develop the first gold standard.
The NPL is the repository of standard units — such as the kilogram, the second, the centimetre — in India and provides calibration services. So far, 200 gold bars — each 35mm long, 15 mm wide and 1.5mm thick — have been made, Director of CSIR-NPL, Dinesh Aswal, told The Hindu . He added that these could be a major source of a major source of revenue in future.
“The gold bar would be 25% cheaper than the imported version and as a business (reference gold bars being bought by dealers for tests) could be worth nearly ₹1000 crore per annum,” he added.
While the bars will be made by the IGM, technical aspects such as measurement would be done by the BARC and certifying the purity of the bars would be the responsibility of the NPL.
Mr. Aswal added that most of the gold references that India imported was sourced from Canada and Switzerland. The new bars being developed were 99.99% pure with impurities of only 100 parts-per-million.
“Development of this reference material indigenously will add to the Make in India campaign and will save foreign exchange as well as minimise dependency on foreign countries,” the IGM said in a statement.
The Department produces Standard Gold Bars of standard fineness and purity of 10g, 50g, 100g, 500g & 1000g denominations.
According to the World Gold Council, demand in India jumped 19% to $3.62 billion (approx. ₹19,000 crore) this quarter, with volumes up 16% to 92.3 tonnes.
