The Reserve Bank today said it has issued five tranches of Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGB) for a total value of Rs 3,060 crore till date.
Investors in these bonds have been provided with the option of holding them in physical or dematerialised form.
"The requests for dematerialisation have largely been processed successfully. A set of records, however, could not be processed for various reasons such as mismatches in names and PAN numbers, inactive or closed demat accounts, besides other reasons," the central bank said in a statement.
RBI issued the bonds in consultation with the government.
SGB, an alternative mode of investment to physical gold, was launched in November last year. It provides investors a choice to diversify portfolio without the need to buy the metal in physical form.
There were more than 2 lakh applications for the fifth tranche of SGB.
The SGB, under the fifth tranche, issued last month will be eligible for trading on stock exchanges from tomorrow.
The Finance Ministry had last month said the sixth tranche of SGB is expected to be issued in October, prior to Diwali. This tranche is expected to come up with additional features to attract consumers even more.
The aggressive marketing of the product by government including through its receiving offices, like banks, post offices, NSE and BSE helped in popularising the bonds.
SGB earns an interest rate of 2.75 per cent per annum, semi-annually payable on initial investment.
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