The India Bullion & Jewellers Association (IBJA) has written to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to implement mandatory self-hallmarking of silver products by jewellers themselves instead of hallmarking agencies, otherwise there could be high costs for jewellers which they may be forced to pass to consumers.
The jewellery and gold trade association said moving bulky silver artefacts like silver utensils, furniture and idols to hallmarking centres will result in high logistic costs. For small items like jewellery and silverwares the weight is very less and hence the price is also within Rs 3,000 as per current silver price.
“To carry out hallmarking of these small items may be expensive affair for jeweller and consumer as well. Further hallmarking agency may not be able to handle so much volume of small silver items/jewellery,” IBJA’s national secretary Surendra Mehta wrote in the letter dated July 18. At present, there are 1622 hallmarking and assaying centres in the country.
The IBJA letter suggested jewellers can themselves assign a unique code for every piece and put the code in the invoice too. It also said other existing rules and fines for gold hallmarking can also be amended.
IBJA in the letter said as silver price has surged in market, it is essential that consumers are not cheated. “We have found that more and more consumers are now opting for silver jewellery and bypassing gold jewellery purchase. However, silver jewellery and artefacts hallmarking are not mandatory in nature and these leaves ample room for consumers to be cheated by jewellers,” said the letter. Silver on Friday was trading at Rs 1,14,252 per kg at the retail end.
Cheating is rampant in silver jewellery, said Chirag Sheth, principal consultant (South Asia) of Metals Focus, a London-based precious metals consulting firm.
“Payal that women wear on their feet is the most sold silver jewellery product in India. They control 50% of the silver jewellery market that stood at 2,700 tonnes in 2024. It is well known in the industry circles that many a time jewellers use silver alloys in this product, which customers are unable to find out. So hallmarking is definitely required for silver items. Also, the demand for silver jewellery is increasing among the young crowd because of the affordability of the product and they are asking for hallmarking.”
Sheth said silver jewellery consumption has grown three-fold from 900 tonnes in 2010 to 2,700 tonne in 2024. India depends on imported silver to meet its domestic demand.
