Centre resolves hallmarking issues bringing relief to small jewellers

• Follow

The concerns raised by jewellers over hallmarking and unique identification number for gold jewellery, which had led to protests by industry associations across the country, have been addressed by the Central government. All the issues were resolved after relaxations were announced during a meeting held between industry leaders and the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs on August 28. The same was also clarified to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) via a virtual meeting held on August 31, according to a report in the Business Standard. This has brought much awaited relief to the small jewellers across the country.

With the decisions taken at Saturday’s meeting, most of the industry’s concerns shall be put to rest, provided all relaxations are notified soon, the report stated quoting Ashish Pethe, Chairman of the All-India Gem and Jewellery Council. During the meeting, Union Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal said that HUID (hallmark unique identification) numbers will not be tracked by any department of the government. This was a major concern as they are manually entered in jewellers’ books.

Centre’s Industry friendly decisions

Two other decisions taken by the government at the meeting were appreciated by the industry bodies. First, the HUID numbers don’t have to be transferred from the hallmarking centre to jewellers, regardless of the size of their businesses. This will save the data of jewellers from being compromised and will also be beneficial for smaller jewellery makers as a majority of them are not equipped with systems to store such data.

The second one was about the ‘first in first out’ method which will now be applied at the hallmarking centres. This means that if a small jeweller or jewellery manufacturer has come first, his or her hallmarking order will have to be served first. In addition to that, if he or she comes with a very small number of pieces, like between 5-10, then the process will have to be completed in the same manner. This will ensure that the hallmarking centres do not give undue priority to big players.

Over the past few weeks, there were some errors in the process owing to glitches in the software. The Centre has assured that jewellers will not face any action for this. This has allayed the fears of the jewellers who were subject to significant stress.