The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has liberalised the procedure for facilitating the import of rough diamonds (termed roughs in the trade).
All stakeholders in the diamond industry chain from mines to retailers have to follow a system of warranty under which they have to individually declare in the invoices they issue that what they have sold are not conflict diamonds.
Modi has been relentless in building his brand regardless of banks having a problem of fraudulent and unauthorised transactions with his companies.
Since he lives locally, Harish Patel is one of the luckier migrant workers in Surat - in that his employer was able to squeeze in a single shift for him at the weaving unit in Kamrej in Gujarat - unlike others who went home for Holi and other festivals just as the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was waxing and ended up stranded in local lockdowns.
The country's two biggest state-run lenders on Saturday pitched for treating a portion of their gold deposits as part of the mandatory cash reserve ratio (CRR) or statutory liquidity ratio (SLR), both of which banks consider as non-productive.
When the lockdown was lifted last year, Rasikbhai Kotadiya, who runs a powerloom unit in the Kim-Pipodara industrial area on the outskirts of Surat, was left with only four workers out of the 48 that he used to employ to run his 128 looms. Though the economy had been unlocked, his textile unit, and that of thousands of others, struggled to resume operations. By the last week of May, nearly 700,000 of Surat's 1.2-1.5 million migrant workers, left high and dry with no pay during the lockdown, had returned home. In Laskana, another textile weaving hub in Surat, the powerlooms were all but silent, with only 2,000 of the total 55,000 looms churning out grey cloth at a snail's pace.
Sectors throw up a wishlist for the Finance Minister.
Contract finally given for Rs 2,400-cr project, with GIFT City-like features
Gold demand in India -- one of most avid purchasers -- is interwoven with culture, tradition, the desire for beauty and the desire for financial protection.
The government has retained 10% duty on import of the yellow metal.
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