The Centre on Monday further extended the deadline for mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and artefacts by a fortnight till June 15 in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In November 2019, the government had announced that hallmarking of gold jewellery and artefacts would be made mandatory across the country from January 15, 2021. However, the deadline was extended for four months till June 1 after jewellers sought more time in view of the pandemic.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Colin Shah, vice chairman of Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJPEC), said, “In terms of hallmarking capacity in the centres that are already there, as per BIS study, what they claim, is that the capacity utilisation today is only 25 percent of what they can actually do. So, having said that, we can easily hallmark much more given the chance.”

However, he said that the challenge for the jeweller community is that these centres are clustered mainly where the manufacturing happens and in some districts there are no hallmarking centres at all.

Presently, 940 assaying and hallmarking centres are operative. Out of this, 84 centres have been set up under the government subsidy scheme in various districts and about 14 crore articles can be hallmarked in a year with the existing capacity of these centres.

India has nearly 4 lakh jewellers, out of which only 35,879 have been BIS certified, as per the World Gold Council.

Shah said, “As per BIS guestimate, nearly 25-30 percent of jewellery is hallmarked and the remaining needs to be done over the next few months. As soon as this becomes mandatory, which is a reality based on our meeting with the honorable minister, and if by June 14 it has to become mandatory, I think there will be a little rush to get everything hallmarked.”

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(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)