Making hallmarked gold and silver jewellery a mandatory standardisation measure in India may be a distant dream to achieve, primarily because of lack of adequate infrastructure for testing, assaying and issuing the hallmark licenses.
At present, the Bureau of Indian Standards, the most widely accepted quality certification agency has only 138 BIS recognised Assaying and Hallmarking Centres (AHCs) all across India which gives the gold and silver shops the hallmark licence after assaying their gold and silver products.
Only 7,000 gold and silver jewellery shops in India have been able to register as hallmarked licensees in India.
Their products have been tested by the BIS AHC and given the hallmark licence ensuring quality.
A proposal to make hallmarking of gold and silver jewellery a mandatory standardisation measure was mooted way back in January 2008, but the ministry of consumer affairs postponed its implementation. "One of the chief reasons might be lack of infrastructure and lack of industry demand.
At present, certification of gold or silver comes under the voluntary certification scheme, awareness needs to be created amidst consumers, just setting up a AHC would not be economically viable if there are no takers," pointed out M K Roy, deputy director general, Bureau of Indian Standards, Eastern region on the sidelines of an interactive seminar organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
"The ministry has postponed it due to various reasons, if at all the proposal is enacted through gazette notification then to start with AHCs will be set in the major metros first, it can't happen all over India," he added.
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As on date, BIS under its certification scheme has been able to issue close to 21,000 product licenses, 7,000 halmarking licenses.
“Clearly these two categories, product certification and hallmarking are getting popular day by day,” said Roy.