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I'm not surprised by the news that Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
bought 200 metric tonnes of gold, 50% of gold sold by International
Monetary Fund (IMF). The moves of IMF are being watched closely
for some time by one and all.
I've a basic question for people who buy gold fearing inflation would
go up to 20 or 30 per cent. Suppose imagine you're having a situation
like Zimbabwe had recently. Gallopping Inflation of 3,000 per cent or
3 billion per cent or something like that. Can you exchange your gold
and buy goods for your daily needs while agriculture production has
reached rock bottome levels? Can you eat gold and survive? It may
be a rhetorical question, but in the last one or two years, nobody has
been able to answer my basic question.
If inflation goes up to 100 or 3000 per cent, the best bet would be to
own a field of ten acres of arable land by a family of ten people or
even more near a perennial river. So that all family members can toil
and till the fields with thier own labour and grow crops organically
without depending on outside world for any fertilisers, insecticides,
etc. I think that's the BEST CASE SCENARIO if you want to be
immune from inflation!
What's suitable for Government of India at this point of time may not
be suitable for Indians. What's suitable for China may not be suitable
for India. Perhaps, from a long-term point of time, acquiring gold is
good for India. But, I'm not too sure about India's timing. My wild
guess is that RBI's timing could have been better. But, you can't get
200 metric tonnes of gold without any impact cost. In fact, SS
Tarapore, former RBI Governor, has been actively advocating for
diversifying India's forex reserves into gold for the past two years. We
Indians have ignored him at our own peril while China had been
stocking up tonnes of gold in the last six to seven years. May be, one
can say better late than never!
Last week, our gold reserves stood at USD 10 billion out of USD 285
billion of India's forex reserves. With this buy, our gold reserves are
likely to go up to USD 17 billion roughly. (One can check RBI's data
at the end of this week)
But I think globally gold may come down to USD 950 or 970 levels in
the near future as USD seems to be gaining ground in the short term.
Happy investing,
with regards,
Rama Krishna V