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Let me first list down the important highlights of the budget with regards to the Bullion, Gems and jewellery Industry:

1. FM has announced to levy Commodity transaction tax (CTT) of 0.01% on all non-agro commodity trades such as Gold, Silver, non-ferrous metals and crude oil.

2. To prevent harassment to passengers, the government has proposed to increase the limit of duty-free import of jewellery via passenger baggage to INR 50,000 for males and INR 1,00,000 for females. The rule has been amended for Indian passenger who has been residing abroad for over a year or a person who is transferring his residence to India.

Budget 2013 has been neutral

          India's greatest worry is current account deficit and when you need more than $75 bln this year and next year to fund current account deficit, I was expecting that a Duty hike is on the cards. Fortunately that is not the case. The government has neither imposed any restriction nor has it hiked the import duty on gold.

I did expect CTT tax to be introduced. But CTT tax will only add INR 300 per kilo of Gold. Though a nominal amount, but unnecessarily added on a common man’s purchase of Gold.  I feel this should have been introduced only when Options product had been established in the commodity’s exchange along with Tax structure that is currently applicable while trading in Equity markets. This would create a level playing field between the stock investor and the commodity exchange investor

Increasing the Duty free limit on gold for a passenger coming to India (conditions already given), is a positive move undertaken by the government, as it will definitely help in curbing the imports to some extent and reduce the pressure on forex.

I was expecting some announcement on the R&D front, new financial instruments to extract Gold lying in India so as to increase CAD, but these were missing.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would personally rate this budget as 6.