Carat$1,500 for ten grams: India's customs base outruns the metal
Notification 71/2026 set the tariff value for imported gold at US$1,500 per 10 grams on 25 August. At Friday's close 10 grams is worth $1,432.12. The gap is 4.7396%, and duty is charged on the larger number.
§1A notification, a number, and the date it took effect.
India's customs service has fixed the value of imported gold at US$1,500 per 10 grams. Notification No. 71/2026-Customs (N.T.), signed on 25 August and effective from 26 August, raises the figure from $1,407, the level set eleven days earlier by Notification No. 70/2026. That is $93 more, a rise of 6.6098%. Silver was left alone at $2,097 the kilogram, and so were palm oil, soybean oil, brass scrap and areca nuts at $11,574 the tonne. Gold was the only line in the table that moved.
§2What the base implies, against what the metal costs.
A tariff value is not a price. It is the base Indian customs applies for ad valorem duty whatever an importer actually paid, and it is reset roughly twice a month. The point of the exercise is to track the world market closely enough that the base is neither a gift nor a penalty. This one no longer does. At $1,500 per 10 grams the notification implies gold at $4,665.52 the ounce. This desk re-read Kitco at press time this morning and gold is $4,454.40, the same figure the tape has carried since Friday's close and unchanged because spot has not traded since. Ten grams of gold is worth $1,432.12.
§3The gap was small on signing day. Friday opened it.
The gap is $67.88, or 4.7396% above what the metal is worth, and it was not opened by anyone's error. On 25 August, the day the notification was signed, this paper's mark of record was $4,634.20, which puts 10 grams at $1,489.93. The base stood $10.07 clear of the metal even then, 0.6759%. What widened it was Friday. Gold fell $150.10 in one session, the worst day this tape has recorded in twenty-three sessions, and a fortnightly notification does not move on a Friday.
Ten grams of gold is worth $1,432.12.
§4Fifteen percent of a number that is not the price.
The cost of that is arithmetic. The combined effective import duty on gold bullion has been 15% since 13 May, when Notification No. 15/2026-Customs took basic customs duty to 10% and the surcharge and cess carried the rest. Fifteen percent of $1,500 is $225.00 per 10 grams. Fifteen percent of $1,432.12 is $214.82. The difference of $10.18 per 10 grams is $1,018.16 on every kilogram landed while both numbers stand. An importer clearing a hundred kilograms this week pays about $101,816 of duty on gold that is not in the box.
Nobody has done anything wrong here and this is not a scandal. A base reset twice a month cannot chase a 3.26% one-day fall, and the next notification will most likely bring it back down. But the trade should know which way the error runs and what it costs, because it runs one way at a time and nobody publishes the gap.
An importer who ships in the last days of a fortnight after a hard fall pays for the calendar; one who ships after a rally is paid by it. The number worth watching is not the duty rate, which has not changed since May. It is the distance between the base and the metal, and this morning that distance is 4.7396%.
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