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Sovereign Gold Bonds 2016 -17 – Series IV

Press Information Bureau
Government of India
Ministry of Finance

23-February-2017 11:15 IST

Government to issue Sovereign Gold Bonds 2016 -17 – Series IV; Applications for the bond to be accepted from February 27, 2017 to March 03, 2017

Government of India, in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India(RBI), has decided to issue Sovereign Gold Bonds 2016-17–Series IV. Applications for the bond will be accepted from February 27, 2017 to March 03, 2017. The Bonds will be issued on March 17, 2017. The Bonds will be sold through banks, Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited (SHCIL), designated post offices and recognised stock exchanges viz., National Stock Exchange of India Limited and Bombay Stock Exchange.

The features of the Bond are given below:

Sl. No.	Item	Details
1	Product name	Sovereign Gold Bond 2016-17 – Series IV
2	Issuance	To be issued by Reserve Bank India on behalf of the Government of India.
3	Eligibility	The Bonds will be restricted for sale to resident Indian entities including individuals, HUFs, Trusts, Universities and Charitable Institutions.
4	Denomination	The Bonds will be denominated in multiples of gram(s) of gold with a basic unit of 1 gram.
5	Tenor	The tenor of the Bond will be for a period of 8 years with exit option from 5th year to be exercised on the interest payment dates.
6	Minimum size	Minimum permissible investment will be 1 grams of gold.
7	Maximum limit	The maximum amount subscribed by an entity will not be more than 500 grams per person per fiscal year (April-March). A self-declaration to this effect will be obtained.
8	Joint holder	In case of joint holding, the investment limit of 500 grams will be applied to the first applicant only.
9	Issue price	Price of Bond will be fixed in Indian Rupees on the basis of simple average of closing price of gold of 999 purity published by the India Bullion and Jewellers Association Limited for the week (Monday to Friday) preceding the subscription period. The issue price of the Gold Bonds will be ` 50 per gram less than the nominal value.
10	Payment option	Payment for the Bonds will be through cash payment (upto a maximum of Rs. 20,000) or demand draft or cheque or electronic banking.
11	Issuance form	The Gold Bonds will be issued as Government of India Stocks under GS Act, 2006. The investors will be issued a Holding Certificate for the same. The Bonds are eligible for conversion into demat form.
12	Redemption price	The redemption price will be in Indian Rupees based on previous week’s (Monday-Friday) simple average of closing price of gold of 999 purity published by IBJA.
13	Sales channel	Bonds will be sold through banks, Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited (SHCIL), designated post offices as may be notified and recognised stock exchanges viz., National Stock Exchange of India Limited and Bombay Stock Exchange, either directly or through agents.
14	Interest rate	The investors will be compensated at a fixed rate of 2.50 per cent per annum payable semi-annually on the nominal value.
15	Collateral	Bonds can be used as collateral for loans. The loan-to-value (LTV) ratio is to be set equal to ordinary gold loan mandated by the Reserve Bank from time to time.
16	KYC Documentation	Know-your-customer (KYC) norms will be the same as that for purchase of physical gold. KYC documents such as Voter ID, Aadhaar card/PAN or TAN /Passport will be required.
17	Tax treatment	The interest on Gold Bonds shall be taxable as per the provision of Income Tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961). The capital gains tax arising on redemption of SGB to an individual has been exempted. The indexation benefits will be provided to long term capital gains arising to any person on transfer of bond
18	Tradability	Bonds will be tradable on stock exchanges within a fortnight of the issuance on a date as notified by the RBI.
19	SLR eligibility	The Bonds will be eligible for Statutory Liquidity Ratio purposes.
20	Commission	Commission for distribution of the bond shall be paid at the rate of 1% of the total subscription received  by  the  receiving offices and receiving offices shall share at least 50% of the commission so received with the agents or sub agents for the business procured through them.

 

New AP Online DBT Portal for NeFMS payments

All the NREGS accounts created in AP Online are migrated to Finacle server (CBS).  If the account number is old one, payment can be made by selecting Non-NeFMS option in POTD.  Now wage seeker may approach for payment in which there will be CBS account number.  Payment can be made in POTD by selecting the NeFMS option.  But transactions of such payments will not appear in the DBT Portal http://appost.aponline.gov.in/ but such transactions can be viewed in the new portal

http://bdp.aponline.gov.in/NeFMS_AP/HomePage.aspx

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Same user name and password used for DBT portal can be used for the above site.  Payments made in both new and old websites of AP Online to be totaled to tally with the payments made in POTD.

Click here to download the material regarding NeFMS payments in POTD.

HANDLING OF COURT CASES ON THE ISSUE OF APPLICABILITY OF CCS (PENSION) RULES INSTEAD OF NPS IN RESPECT OF GDS APPOINTED TO REGULAR DEPARTMENTAL POSTS AFTER 01-01-2014

No “Conditions Apply” in India Post Payments Bank Says IPPB CEO

Our USP is door-to-door banking with help of postman: IndiaPost Payments Bank CEO

IndiaPost Payments Bank, which is set to launch operations soon, will follow a bottoms-up approach, targeting people who either have feature phones or no mobiles at all.

In his first interview after taking over as the CEO of IndiaPost Payments Bank, Ashok Pal Singh tells ET's Surabhi Agarwal that the idea of the bank will be to simplify and universalise payments. Excerpts:

You rolled out a few pilots; what is the timeline for the launch?

We started in Ranchi and Raipur, and our concept is to have a district office in each district. The idea is that the branch office in a district will map all the post offices, urban and rural, in that area.

The idea is to test this model out through the pilot. We are hoping that by September we will start operations in at least 650 districts of the country.

What is going to be your target audience?

The core of our audience is the 500 million who use feature phones and we are currently testing how familiar they are even with the basic banking products -are they comfortable with it or do these need to be simplified?

How do you plan to differentiate your offerings?

Something that many others are doing but we want to pilot here is paperless account opening. Something that others are not doing but might emerge as our USP is door-to-door banking with the help of the postman.

Plus, simplified payment solutions for the masses is what we will be targeting, both for these feature phone users and around 350 million who are below that -who are without any phone at all. The payments bank will depend on third party fee-based services because the way in which the regulator has put it, you can't make money on anything else.

How do you look at the intense competition in the space from players such as Paytm and Airtel Payment Bank?

We are looking at a bottoms-up approach because our so-called competitors will start skimming the market. Let them do it. We will attempt to broaden and deepen the market from below.

That may not be as great a commercial proposition as skimming the market, but we believe that once we broaden and deepen it, there is a larger objective which is also being served and ultimately everyone will benefit including the so-called competitors.

We are not positioning ourselves as competitors because we are funded out of public money, and typically government should not be competing with its corporates, because they are ours. it's still a win-win for India.

Some of your competitors are offering interest rates as high as 7.5%. How do you plan to match it?

I have nothing to say on how they are doing it. But in any case, they have private money at their disposal. All my funding is from the government which is public money. Which is Rs 400 crore equity, Rs 400 crore grants. I have no means to do that and these are going to be short-term in any case.

Someone who says that you get that fancy rate of interest immediately puts an asterisk saying conditions apply. We also want to put an asterisk which says no conditions apply. Because if we have to live off the brand of the post office, it has to be about integrity and trust.