BND-4201

•  India’s first home-grown high purity gold reference standard – the Bharatiya Nirdeshak Dravya (BND-4201) – was launched.
• 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
• Gold reference standard is indispensable in gold and jewellery hall marking.
• 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.
• The Department produces Standard Gold Bars of standard fineness and purity of 10g, 50g, 100g, 500g & 1000g denominations.

Analysis:

• 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.
• India despites being second largest markets for gold after China, goldsmiths in the country were depended on imported reference gold bars (mostly imported was sourced from Canada and Switzerland) to check purity of their biscuits, coins and jewellery. .BND-4201 standard reference material will help to minimise dependency on foreign countries and add to Make in India campaign, saving foreign exchange.
• The BND-4201 standard gold bar are 25% cheaper than the imported version. It will also help jewellers to move towards more instrumental methods rather
• than conventional fire assay methods for testing purity of gold, which time consuming and non-environment friendly as poisonous gases are released.
• This will also be useful for Collection and Purity Testing Centres to certify the purity of gold deposits under the gold monetisation scheme.
• 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.

By: Vishal