Mumbai : Bank of Baroda (BOB), a leading public sector bank has launched a sale of 24 Carat gold coins to coincide with this festive season. Starting from Tuesday BOB will offer gold coins in denominations of 4, 5 and 8 grams. BOB's brand ambassador and former Indian cricket captain Rahul Dravid launched the gold coins.

"This initiative is a step towards doubling the non-interest income of BoB by 2010.We will offer the gold coins at the most competitive rates and also with the least possible margin for the bank," said S C Gupta, Executive director of the bank.

The bank is willing to lower its margin to offer competitive prices. While the industry average margin on such products is 6-8 percent, BOB looks content with a margin of 4-6 percent.

The gold coins, which will be sourced from Volcambi refinery in Switzerland will have an assay certification of 99.99% purity. The sale of the gold coins will be paced gradually with the first phase covering 141 branches in 80 cities. Shortly the sale will expand to 250 branches.

As a further incentive, BOB is offering two percent additional discount to its customers while non-banking customers can avail this discount only when they indulge in bulk buying.

Many public sector and private sector banks issue gold coins. Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of the new banks in private sector had issued 210 kg of gold coins last year and has set up a target to sell 500 kg of such coins this year.