| The decision comes in the wake of various amendments made by the regulator to the Sebi Custodian and Securities Act and allied acts, which permitted the custodians of the Gold ETF schemes to hire services of third party depositories for safe keeping of the bullion. |
| Benchmark mutual fund has yet not finalised its custodian for the scheme, while Bank of Nova Scotia would be the custodian for UTI's Gold ETF. |
| Benchmark could be launching its scheme as soon as it finalises its custodian. |
| However, the UTI MF might delay its launch till last week of February, as the fund house has already launched two New Fund Offers last week, industry sources said. |
| Last month, Kotak Mutual Fund also filed its draft application for Gold ETF. Deutche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank would be the custodians of Kotak's scheme. However, Kotak's scheme is yet to receive the Sebi nod. |
| GETFs allow investors to trade directly in gold like other equity instruments. Internationally, the GETFs have wider presence in the US and UK markets. |
| Analysts expect Indian investors could find GETF attractive to invest as the country holds gold stocks of more than Rs 24 lakh crore. |
| Sebi have been working on the issue of Gold ETFs since long time and made few crucial amendments to the regulations in last two months. |
| As per the new regulations, banks, which would act as a custodian for the GETF, would be primarily responsible for safe keeping of the gold, even though they could take services of outside parties for safe keeping. |
| Recently, the regulator also issued guidelines for valuation of the gold held by the exchange traded funds. Amending the mutual fund regulations, the Sebi said the valuation of gold would be based on AM fixing price of London Bullion Markets Association in US Dollars. |
| The amendments also said that the custodians have to renew their certificate of operation every three years. |
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