Friday, 4th February 2005 (4002 views)

India's gold committee, set up to review gold hallmarking in the country has claimed that hallmarking needs to be made mandatory in order to support the system.

At present hallmarking comes under the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) but it is not compulsory for all jewellers to mark gold jewellery between nine carat and 22 carat or 24 carat.

The hallmarking system was set up four years ago, but it has not been able to take off as expected because of the lack of any ruling, as well as procedural problems and a lack of adequate facilities.

According to recent figures, just over 600 jewellers out of around 300,000 have applied hallmarking and only around 35 lakh pieces have been hallmarked, Business Standard India reports.

Bullion consultant, Madhusudan Daga, explained that if it was made obligatory then compliance would be guaranteed and the process would be less expensive.

Although India is the largest consumer of gold jewellery at more than 500 tonnes, figures from the BIS show that less than 2.5 tonnes of this is under the hallmarking scheme.

"Additional hallmarking costs are unviable for small traders as customers have a choice between hallmarked jewellery and uncertified jewellery of roughly similar quality," Arun S. Kaigaonkar, chairman of the Chintamani group and vice-president of Mumbai Gold Club said, explaining the current situation for jewellers.

 

« Back to the stories

 

The news feeds on this site are independently provided by Adfero Limited © and do not represent the views or opinions of the World Gold Council.