IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iim/iimawp/14724.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Strategic Acquisition and Value Addition of Gold Resources for India

Author

Listed:
  • Sundaravalli Narayanaswami
  • Anmaya Agarwal

Abstract

This paper tries to address India's dependency on imported gold, where annual demand (~800 tonnes) (World Gold Council, 2025) vastly exceeds domestic production (~1.5 tonnes) (Ministry of Mines, 2024), leading to high imports and creating significant current account pressure. Our research identifies countries offering below-average import costs while revealing India's underutilized refining capacity—just one LBMA accredited refinery (London Bullion Market Association, n.d.) within an 1,800-tonne capacity industry competing against unorganized operators for limited raw materials (World Gold Council, 2022-a). Through comparative analysis of international models, we present two strategic pathways. Switzerland demonstrates substantial value addition (~40%) through its refineries, transforming gold doré into finished bullion. Alternatively, Japan achieves remarkable export capacity (200 tonnes) despite minimal mining through complete vertical integration—importing gold ores, recycling 500 tonnes of gold scrap annually, and recovering precious metals from electronic waste through its 11 LBMA accredited refineries (London Bullion Market Association, n.d.). Japanese refineries trade gold in interesting ways like securing supply by acquiring stakes in foreign mines (IAMGOLD Corporation, 2017) or developing premium "green gold" through processes that reduce the amount of carbon emitted (ARE Holding Inc., 2024). This research provides crucial insights for Indian policymakers and industry stakeholders to transition from price takers to price setters in global gold markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Sundaravalli Narayanaswami & Anmaya Agarwal, 2025. "Strategic Acquisition and Value Addition of Gold Resources for India," IIMA Working Papers WP 2025-04-02, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:iim:iimawp:14724
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iima.ac.in/sites/default/files/2025-04/WPNo.2025-04-02.pdf
    File Function: English Version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iim:iimawp:14724. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eciimin.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.