Mumbai, Nov 6: The State Bank of India, the country’s largest bank, will start selling gold coins from 100 branches across the country.

The SBI is the latest to jump on the bandwagon. ICICI Bank had kicked off the trend back in 2003-04 and several others have entered the fray since.

“We will be selling gold coins weighing between 2 gm and 50 gm. One of the world’s leading gold refineries — Produits Artistiques de Métaux Précieux (PAMP) — will supply the gold coins. At present, we are not considering buyback of our gold coins,” said N. Raja, chief general manager of SBI’s Mumbai circle.

ICICI Bank, which is targeting sales of up to 3.7 tonnes in 2007-08, expects to offer a buyback facility soon to its customers — which has been a major drawback of the scheme.

“Due to rising prices, our gold retailing business is not growing as fast as it used to. Our sales have grown over 100 per cent annually over the last three years. This year it grew by only 30 to 40 per cent. During Dhanteras, we are offering a discount of 3-5 per cent to our gold coin customers,” said Kanwar Vivek, general manager of ICICI Bank.

Most banks charge a premium of anywhere between 10 per cent and12 per cent on the gold coins. This is against a jewellers’ rate of 2-5 per cent. “On an average, we have sold 10 kg of gold coins every day in the past week. We have seen an annual growth of 18-20 per cent in gold retailing over the last two years. This year we are aiming to sell 1.5 tonnes of gold coins,” said U. Balakrishna Bhat, general manager of Corporation Bank.