RBI seeks details of gold stocks with temples

Faced with an ever increasing demand for gold from traders and jewellers, the government and the Reserve Bank of India are looking at the huge stock of gold lying idle at some of the country's biggest temples.

Reports quoting sources at Kerala's famous Guruvayoor temple said the temple boards in Kerala have received letters from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seeking details of the stock of gold in their possession.

While some of the richest temples in the country such as Tirumala Tirupati, Sree Padmanabhaswamy, Guruvayoor Shree Krishna temple, Shree Siddhivinayak and Vaishnodevi are in no mood to part with their treasure, the government is trying to coax them to release them to the market to ease the supply crunch and control dollar outflows.

The gold trade is also keen to get a slice of more than 20,000 tonnes of gold, worth around $980 -$1000 billion, stashed away in peoples' homes and temples.

India imports on an average gold worth over $7 billion each month.

Temples across the country hold stocks of gold, with some having bigger hordes.

The idea of utilising temple gold to ease the pressure on the fiscal and current account deficits struck the government after a Supreme Court committee, in July 2011, stumbled upon six vaults at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram.

With one vault yet to be opened, the treasure found in the other five vaults has been estimated to be worth over Rs1,00,000 crore, just about the loss suffered in the irregular allocation of coal blocks by the central government.

RBI's regional director Salim Gangadharan confirmed that a letter had been sent, but clarified, "The RBI has no plans to buy gold, and this exercise is nothing but part of a statistical exercise."