GUJARAT: Indian Gujarat Customs has seized 60 kilogram of gold at the airport in Ahmadabad. Six smugglers have arrested, including 5 men and a woman, who was coming on an Emirates flight from Dubai.
The arrest is likely to strengthen pressure on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to cut the gold import duty from a record-high 10 percent in his budget on Saturday.
India is the world’s top buyer of gold, and the high duty has made illegal shipments profitable. The World Gold Council estimates that 175 tonnes of gold were smuggled into the country last year.
“Smuggling is happening because of high customs duty on gold,” said Prithviraj Kothari, executive director of the India Bullion & Jewellers’ Association, adding that smuggling may rise in 2015 if import duties remain high.
“If we want smuggling to become unattractive, the government should bring down duty to 2-4 percent.”
Acting on a tip-off, customs caught them as they were loading bags containing gold into a car worth about $2.57 million, senior customs officer A.K. Sharma told Reuters.
The suspects told customs that traders pay them up to $1,600 for one trip on top of free air tickets, food and hotel costs.
In India, smugglers risk a jail term of up to seven years, although such a penalty is rare and the main deterrent is confiscation of the gold.
When the country first started stifling gold imports in 2013 to tackle a widening trade deficit, smugglers went to the extent of getting human mules to swallow nuggets or hiding gold bars in dead cows.
