AHMEDABAD (Commodity Online): The World Gold Council is desperately trying to lure back gold customers to jewellery shops with a lot of schemes during this festivals season.

With several consumer goods companies and mobile phone firms vying to win over customers with lucrative offers this bonus season, gold jewellery shops are also giving a lot of schemes and prizes for customers now.

The WGC has planned shopping festivals that will dish out Rs 2.2 crore worth of prizes, while generating Rs 5,000 crore worth of business for the flagging industry.

In what is the first initiative of its kind, the WGC is holding the month-long festivals christened the ‘Great Indian Gold Rush’ simultaneously across 10 cities in the country in the bid to give a shot to the gold business.

It has tied up with local jewellery retailers, banks and branded jewellery makers to hold the festival, that begins with the onset Navratra (September 19) and ends with Diwali.

The festivals will be held in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Nagpur, Gujarat (considered a single market), Indore, Kanpur and Lucknow. The carrot for customers to steer away from lifestyle statement gizmos and come back to gold and silver is that prizes worth 1,500 gm of gold (Rs 22 lakh at today’s price) are up for grabs in every city.

Though India is the largest single buyer of gold in the world, consuming 22-25 per cent of total global production annually, the total demand during 2008 was 660 tonnes, a 15 per cent dip over the 776 tonnes in 2007, while the turnover on gold stood at Rs 112,000 crore, Mr Sodah reveals.

The first quarter of 2009 too has not been very encouraging, with sales at 135 tonnes, down by 51 per cent year on year. WGC expects to boost demand for gold jewellery, coins, chips and ETFs - by at least 20 per cent through the new measure