New Delhi: There has been a big decline in gold imports during the period of global epidemic coronavirus. The latest figures show that in the first two months of the fiscal year 2020-21 - in April and May, gold imports decreased to $ 7.141 million. This means that in two months of April and May, the demand for gold has decreased.

In the same period of 2019-20, gold worth $ 8.75 billion was imported. Gems and jewelery exports declined by 82.46 per cent to $ 1.1 billion in April-May 2020. Similarly, during the first two months of 2020-21, silver imports also fell by 30.7 per cent to $ 43.789 million. The reason for this decline is due to a huge decrease in demand due to the covid-19 epidemic. The fall in gold imports has helped in reducing the country's trade deficit (the difference between imports and exports). During this period, the difference between imports and exports was reduced to $ 9.91 billion, which was $ 30.7 billion a year earlier.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that due to the narrowing of the trade deficit, India left a current account surplus of $ 0.6 billion or 0.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the January-March quarter as compared to a year earlier. A deficit of $ 4.6 billion, or 0.7 percent of GDP, was reported.

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