印度的黄金需求激增(下)

This insatiable appetite is a worry for policymakers. Vast gold imports can destabilise the economy.

这种对黄金的贪婪欲望让决策者感到担忧。大量进口黄金会破坏经济稳定。

During the 2013 “taper tantrum”, when India’s foreign-exchange reserves were lower than they are now, a rush of gold imports helped push the current-account deficit to 4.8% of gdp and fuelled worries of a currency crisis.

在2013年的“缩减恐慌”(taper tantrum)期间，当印度的外汇储备低于现在的水平时，一股黄金进口热潮将经常项目赤字推高至GDP的4.8%，并引发了对货币危机的担忧。

Savings stashed away as idle gold could be put to more productive use elsewhere.

用来存储闲置黄金的储蓄本可以有其他更有成效的用途。

Indian households hold 22,500 tonnes of the physical metal—five times the stock in America’s bullion depository at Fort Knox and worth $1.4trn at current prices.

印度民众持有22500吨实物黄金，是美国诺克斯堡黄金库存的5倍，按当前价格计算价值1.4万亿美元。

The average family has 11% of its wealth in gold (against 5% in financial assets).

平均每个家庭的财产中有11%是黄金(相比之下，金融资产仅占5%)。

The government has tried using sticks to push people away from bullion.

政府曾试图用棍棒政策迫使人们远离黄金。

Import duties hover around 10%, even after cuts in last year’s budget aimed at keeping smuggling in check.

虽然去年为了遏制走私而削减了预算，但进口关税仍然徘徊在10%左右。

It is also experimenting with carrots that lure savers away from physical gold.

政府还尝试用胡萝卜政策引诱储户远离实体黄金。

The central bank has ramped up issuance of sovereign gold bonds, which are denominated in grams of gold.

印度央行加大了以每克黄金计价的主权黄金债券的发行力度。

Of the 86 tonnes’ worth issued since 2015, about 60% were sold after the pandemic began.

在2015年以来发行的86吨黄金中，约60%是在疫情爆发后售出的。

And the gold monetisation scheme, which allows households to hand gold over to a bank and earn interest, was revamped last year to reduce limits on the size of deposits.

此外，去年还对允许家庭将黄金交给银行并赚取利息的黄金货币化计划进行了改革，以减少对存储规模的限制。

Lockdowns inadvertently helped the state’s agenda.

疫情封锁无意中帮助了印度的议程。

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad found that when shops shut and sales of physical gold ground to a halt, some Indians turned to online alternatives.

位于艾哈迈达巴德的印度管理学院的研究人员发现，当商店关门、实体黄金的销售停止时，一些印度人会转向网上寻找替代品。

Mobile payments platforms like PhonePe and Google Pay reported rising appetite for digital gold, which is sold online and stored by the seller.

PhonePe和谷歌Pay等移动支付平台报告称，人们对数字黄金的需求正在上升。数字黄金在网上销售，并由卖家存储。

Money also rushed into gold exchange-traded funds (etfs). Their assets hit 184bn rupees ($2.5bn) in December, a 30% rise in a year.

资金也涌入黄金交易所交易基金(etfs)。去年12月，这些基金的资产达到了1840亿卢比(25亿美元)，同比增长30%。

Still, only a sliver of the population, mostly well-off urban types and millennials, invest in complex financial products.

但是，仍然只有一小部分人选择投资复杂的金融产品，其中大多数是富裕的城市居民和千禧一代。

A large part of India’s demand for physical gold comes from rural areas, where it seems in no danger of losing its lustre.

印度对实体黄金的很大一部分需求来自农村地区，在那里，黄金似乎总是有恃无恐。

Those in far-flung villages don’t always have a bank account or a smartphone, making it hard to buy gold online.

那些住在偏远村庄的人通常没有银行账户或智能手机，因此很难在网上购买黄金。

Nor could they easily show off digital metal to the neighbours or lend their daughter an etf to wear on her big day.

数字黄金也不便于他们向邻居炫耀，而且女儿们的婚嫁之日也不可能佩戴黄金交易所交易基金。