RIL Chief Mukesh Ambani calls surge in silver imports ‘unproductive’

Reliance Industries Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani has called India’s rising imports of silver and gold as “unproductive,” highlighting the economic cost of channelising household savings into physical bullion rather than financial assets.

Speaking alongside BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink at a JioBlackRock fireside chat in Mumbai, Ambani said Indians have historically been disciplined savers, but much of that saving has not translated into productive capital formation.

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“Indians have really been savers. If you look at our history, we have saved consistently over the last five, six decades. What has happened is that some of this saving has not been productive,” he said. “If you see just the last year, India imported $60 billion worth of gold and we imported $10-15 billion worth of silver and all of this not for industrial use, but really for domestic savings. Now this is unproductive.”

Often seen as a lower-ticket hedge during periods of global volatility, silver generates little or no yield in its physical form and contributes minimally to capital formation. India remains among the world’s largest bullion buyers. In FY25 alone, gold imports crossed $45 billion, while silver imports surged on retail demand.

Ambani argued that redirecting even a fraction of these flows into capital markets could unlock compounding gains.

“If we can convince the Indian saver that if one invests in the capital markets in a safe, transparent and consistent way, there are returns. And these returns compound,” he noted.

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“For us at JioBlackRock, the opportunity is to encourage Indians to save, but to make sure that we give them the options to convert those savings into earnings, and hopefully compound their earnings, so that they not only work for themselves, but they also work for the Indian economy,” he said.

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