Investors remained bearish on gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in August and pulled out Rs 51 crore from this instrument, taking the total to Rs 462 crore in the first five months of the current fiscal.

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Trading in Gold ETF segment has been tepid in the last three financial years. The funds had witnessed an outflow of Rs 903 crore, Rs 1,475 crore and Rs 2,293 crore in 2015-16, 2014-15 and 2013-14, respectively.

The pace of outflow, however, slowed down in 2015-16 as against the preceding two years on account of sluggish equity market.

"The inherent promise to maintain global liquidity has seen money pouring into global equities taking equities higher and making gold look less attractive," Chirag Mehta, Senior Fund Manager Commodities at Quantum Asset Management Company said.

"Indian Gold ETFs continue to witness outflows with more investors seen exiting the yellow metal. This could largely be on account of investors booking profits who would have bought at lower levels around and seeing good returns in a small pan of time," he added.

According to the latest data available with Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi), Gold ETFs witnessed a net outflow of Rs 51 crore last month, as compared to Rs 183 crore in July, which was the highest monthly outflow since June 2014, when gold-backed ETFs saw a pullout of Rs 227 crore.

The instrument saw a pullout of Rs 80 crore in June, Rs 79 crore in May and another Rs 69 crore in April.

This takes the total outflow to Rs 462 crore in the first five months (April-August) of the ongoing fiscal, 2016-17.

The assets base of gold-linked ETFs account dropped to Rs 6,349 crore at the end of August from Rs 6,499 crore in July-end.

Mutual fund sector has 14 gold-based schemes, which have been in the market since 2006-07.