High level of impurity found in gold jewellery, ASSOCHAM
09 Oct '06
2 min read
As the festive and the marriage season draw closer to further push the gold demand, there are evidences which amply suggest that gold jewellery is being sold off in major cities across the country with impurity levels, ranging between 13.44 per cent to 44.66 per cent, according to the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).
In a paper on 'Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery in India – An Initiative to Ensure Purity' brought out by ASSOCHAM, it has been discovered that in 16 cities, out of 162 samples, taken and tested for purity, 147 samples (90.7 per cent) were found short in purity with average shortfall of 13.44 per cent and highest shortage of 44.66 per cent.
“Due to unorganized nature of the trade, Indian consumer is very often faced with the problem of irregular metal quality. While a buyer, for instance, will be told that he has bought gold of 22 carats, when he goes to sell or exchange it, he discovers that the gold is actually only of 18 carats or less."
"In India, the emphasis is on high caratage jewellery, and problems have also arisen due to lack of suitable high carat solders. The traditional handcrafted pieces in 22 carat contain many soldered joints and the use of solder alloys of a much lower caratage leads to serious levels of under-carating”, adds Chamber's findings.
16 major cities in which jewellery samples were taken and tested by experts recently comprise Delhi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Surat, Chennai, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Pune, Cochin, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Bangalore, Agra and Bhopal only suggest that the campaign for gold hallmarking massively being undertaken by various government and non-government agencies have made hardly any impact on investors that prefer buying jewellery, said ASSOCHAM Chief, Mr. Anil K. Agarwal.
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