Do Sharia Gold ETFs Pay Dividends or Yield?

No. A gold ETF produces no dividend, no coupon, and no interest, because gold itself generates no income — it is a metal that sits in storage, not a business that earns profits or a bond that pays a coupon. Your entire return comes from one source: the change in the unit's price between when you buy and when you sell. This is a genuine difference from other things in a securities account. Indonesian stocks can pay cash dividends into your RDN, and some mutual funds make periodic distributions to unit holders. A gold ETF does neither. It also means there is nothing to cushion a decline — if the gold price falls, there is no income stream partly offsetting the loss the way a dividend might on a stock.

• Why gold pays nothing. A share represents part-ownership of a business that can generate and distribute profit. A bond is a loan that pays interest. Gold is neither — it is an asset whose value is only what someone will pay for it. No cash flow is produced at any point in the chain.
• Return is price movement, full stop. The only way a gold ETF position gains value is the unit price rising above what you paid. There is no second component.
• This differs from other holdings in the same account. Indonesian stocks can distribute cash dividends, credited to the investor's RDN. Certain mutual funds distribute income to unit holders periodically. A gold ETF sits in the same securities account as your stocks but behaves differently in this respect.
• Costs run one way only. Management costs are charged inside the fund and reflected in its net asset value over time, and there is no income arriving to offset them. Over long holding periods this cost drag matters more for a non-income asset than it would for one paying a distribution.
• The implication for expectations. A gold ETF is not a source of passive income and should not be compared against products that pay one. If regular income is what you are after, this is the wrong instrument for that goal.

Related questions:

Q: So how do I make money from a gold ETF?
Only by selling units for more than you paid. You buy at one price, the price moves, and you realise a gain or loss when you sell on the exchange. Nothing accrues to you in the meantime. This makes the entry price and the exit price the only two numbers that determine your outcome, alongside the costs you pay on each transaction.

Q: Do Indonesian stocks pay dividends but gold ETFs don't?
Correct. Indonesian stocks can pay cash dividends, credited in full to the investor's RDN. A gold ETF has no equivalent because its underlying asset produces no income. Both can sit in the same securities account, so it is worth being clear which of your holdings generate distributions and which rely purely on price movement.

Q: Does the fund earn anything from lending out its gold?
Each fund's own prospectus is the authoritative document for what it may and may not do with its underlying assets, and that is where to check for any specific product. What holds generally is that these are sharia funds built to a fatwa that requires units to be backed by underlying physical gold rather than an unbacked promise of exposure, and no distribution to unit holders is a feature of these products.

Q: Is a gold ETF worse than a dividend stock then?
Different, not worse — they do different jobs. A dividend stock gives you an income stream and exposure to a company's fortunes. A gold ETF gives you exposure to gold, which historically behaves differently from equities and is often held for that reason. Judging one against the other on dividend yield alone misses what each is for.