Jewellery traders across the nation are set to endure more small business losses amid the lockdown effect on festive sales through Akshaya Tritiya and Eid on Friday. According to the traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), the highest quantity of gold and jewellery is sold on Akshaya Tritiya annually. “Coincidentally, the festival of Eid will also be celebrated tomorrow and the jewellery trade across the country will suffer the additional loss of trade of gold jewellery on Eid. It will be the second consecutive year for the jewellery traders to remain under lockdown during such festivals…This year also due to the lockdown, the jewellery shops are closed in the majority of states,” CAIT’s National President BC Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal stated on Thursday.
“In 2019, there was a sale of more than Rs 10,000 crores on Akshaya Tritiya but last year due to lockdown, the gold sale was restricted to only 5 per cent worth around Rs 500 crores. Now in the second year of lockdown on Akshaya Tritiya, the gold and jewellery trade has suffered a big setback,” stated Pankaj Arora, National Convenor, All India Jewellers and Goldsmith Federation. Importantly, the Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court had not too long ago passed an interim order to quit the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) from taking any coercive action on jewellers or impose penalty till June 14, 2021, who are not in a position to comply with mandatory hallmarking regulation by June 1, 2021, due to the lack of sufficient infrastructure in terms of assaying and hallmarking centres.
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Hallmarking is a purity certification of valuable metals and has been voluntary in nature so far. In November 2019, the government had announced mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and artefacts from January 15, 2021. This was later extended till June 1, 2021, as jewellers had sought time to shift to hallmarking and register themselves with the BIS amid the pandemic.
Meanwhile, CAIT had last week stated that traders had suffered the total small business loss of about Rs 6.25 lakh crore through April due to several Covid restrictions like lockdowns, curfews, and so on., enforced by state governments. This like about Rs 4.25 lakh crore loss to retail organizations and about Rs 2 lakh crore loss to the wholesale trade. Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI), which represents about 4 crore micro, smaller, and medium retailers in the nation, had told TheSpuzz Online in April that that lockdown may well lead to loss of at least about 40 per cent of the month-to-month earnings of micro retailers. India’s gems and jewellery export sector contributed about 27 per cent to the international jewellery consumption in 2019, according to IBEF. The exports are anticipated to attain $one hundred billion by 2025 even as amongst April and December 2020, exports of gems and jewellery stood at $16.88 billion.