Jewellers request 20 carat category added to gold hallmarking, centres in every city

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Nov 8, 2017

​As Indian government is all set to make Gold jewellery hallmarking with carat count compulsory to protect consumers by January 2019, jewellers in the country have requested  for to add fourth category of 20 carat.
  

Last week, Consumers Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had stated that gold jewellery hallmarking would be made compulsory from January 2019 with hallmarking in three categories -- 14 carat, 18 carat and 22 carat.
 
Now, the jewellers from the small and medium segment have requested the addition of the 20 carat category as they feel the demand for this category is very high in the country.

"There is a large number of bulk business which is done in 20CT as more than 80% of families in India have a trend of gifting 4-5 tola (40 to 50 grams) of gold to their daughter during wedding in this category.
Therefore, we have requested minister Paswan to consider this fourth category of 20CT under Hallmark certification by the government of India,” Sunil Kumar Jain, chairman, Federation of Industrialists, Traders and Jewellers Associations (FITJA) was quoted as saying by the Times of India.
 
It has also requested for Hallmarking centers across all cities to help jewellers carry out the process in their own respective cities.
 
"It is the duty of government to look into the needs of jewellers in trade to have Hallmarking centres at every city or tahsil level so that jewellers may go for hallmarking in their own city as jewellery is a costly and risky affair to carry out of town for the same," added Jain.
 
The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) identifies hallmarking centres and gives recognition. Hallmarking of gold jewellery, which lends credibility to the purity of gold was introduced in 2000 but not made compulsory.
 
Now with hallmarking set to be compulsory in the world’s second largest jewellery market, BIS will be empowered to cancel licences of manufacturer, order product recall and compensation if jewellers across the country do not conform to the set standards.