Temples Now The Only Hope For Gold Industry?

Kerala's Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple, which dates back almost 5,000 years, is also believed to have enormous amount of gold, precious stones, rare coins and idols.

"We have not received any letters from the RBI seeking any information regarding the temple gold. We have no estimation of the temple treasury. This temple dates back to thousands of years and offerings to Padmanabhaswamy have been made since then. It is difficult to even hypothetically give any estimation," an executive director of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple told.

M.V.Nair, chief of the expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court for drawing up an inventory of the temple's wealth, told: "We are asked to document the inventories of the temple. We are reporting directly to the Supreme Court. Our parameters for working are restricted. The Supreme Court will decide what it will do with the findings. We are working in this project for the last one year and hope to complete the project by December."

An official of the Chidambaram Temple in Tamil Nadu also denied of receiving any letter from RBI.

The RBI and the government have already adopted many steps to control the import of gold to arrest the current account deficit. The government recently raised customs duty on gold to 10 percent.

Import of gold swelled 87 percent from 205 tonnes in April-July 2012 to 383 tonnes during the corresponding period of 2013. Last year, 900 tonnes of gold was imported. After oil, gold amounts for India's second highest import bill.

The current price of gold is around 30,375 per 10 grams. No imports have taken place since July 22.

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