Small jewellers see relief as key hallmarking issues resolved

Industry wants relaxations to be notified at the earliest

Jewellers’ concerns over hallmarking and unique identification number for jewellery, which had caused friction between the industry and the government, have been resolved following relaxations announced during a meeting between the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs and industry leaders. This was also clarified in a virtual meeting with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) on Tuesday.

Speaking after Tuesday’s meeting, Ashish Pethe, chairman of the All India Gem and Jewellery Council, said: “With the decisions taken in Saturday’s meeting with the ministry and officials and clarified by BIS [on Tuesday] in an online meeting, most of the industry’s concerns shall be set to rest, provided all relaxations are notified soon.”

Union Minister Piyush Goyal had said at Saturday’s meeting that no government department would track the HUID (hallmark unique identification) numbers, which was a major concern, because it had to be entered manually in jewellers’ books.

Two other decisions taken on Saturday were lauded. The HUID numbers (data) will not have to be transferred from hallmarking centre to jewellers (irrespective of the size of jewellers). This will prevent misuse of such data of jewellers, and help smaller jewellers as many of them don’t have the systems to store this data.

Second, the ‘first in first out’ method will be applied at the hallmarking centre, which means if a small jeweller/manufacturer has come first, his hallmarking order will have to be served first. Secondly, if a jeweller comes with very small number of pieces, say 5-10, her/his order will have to be prioritised out of turn. This will ensure that the centres will not prioritise big players.

Lastly, in the past few weeks some errors had occurred in the process because of glitches in the software. The government has assured jewellers that they will not face action for this.

These issues had caused significant stress for jewellers, wholesalers, and manufacturers, especially smaller operations that form a large chunk of the industry.