Gold diggers..

“Oh, we don’t import gold at all..” I heard an Irish national say earlier this week at work. Of course it doesn’t come off as a run-of-the-mill dialogue to someone who belongs to a country that imports close to USD 57 billion of gold(If the sparkling brides-to-be of our country still don’t realize it, I’m talking about India!) I never fully believed it myself, so I started by doing some basic research on the export/import of Ireland.. and well, I had to believe it now. Apparently the country has very small deposits of gold, but I couldn’t find one place that talks about gold contributing even a fraction of a percentage to the country’s import.

In a parallel and alternate universe, we reserve 30% of the gold imported into our country  with the customs department and another 30% to be mandatorily reserved by the merchants for re-exporting it back. In a world where a country’s power is determined by the amount of petroleum and gold that’s being imported into/exported out of the country, it was really surprising to hear a country that’s entirely oblivious to importing gold. Another fact to bear in mind is the entire population of Ireland is not even half of Bangalore’s population, which is definitely a contributing factor to the country’s growth. It’s a stark comparison to make, but it was definitely pleasing to hear one country whose economy is independent of gold.