Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal chaired a meeting to review the activities of Bureau of Indian Standards and it was decided that sale of gold jewelry and gold artefacts hallmarked without six-digit alphanumeric HUID – Unique Identification Number – shall not be permitted from April 1.
Sale of Gold Jewelry without six digit code to be banned from 1st April 2023
Further it has been decided that BIS will provide 80 percent concession on the certification/ minimum marking fee across various product certification schemes, which will promote quality culture
Official statement stated,
“Starting from 1st April 2023, the sale of only gold jewellery with HUID shall be permitted,”
Nidhi Khare, Additional Secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs stated,
“in consumers interest, it has been decided that after March 31st, sale of gold jewellery and gold artefacts hallmarked without HUID will not be permitted.”
She further stated that at present four digits as well as six digit HUID are being used currently and hallmarked gold jewelry items are being sold across the country, even in those districts where it is not mandatory yet because of consumers demand for quality product.
Overview of Piyush Goyal’s BIS meeting
In the meeting , Piyush Goyal directed the BIS to strengthen the testing infrastructure in the country.
Further BIS was deliberated
- To increase the frequency of product testing and market surveillance depending on the criticality of components used for the consumer safety.
- BIS should increase the frequency of lab inspection
- BIS directed to enhance market surveillance for different products such as pressure cooker, helmets and other consumer products to ensure product safety.
- BIS has proposed Quality Control Orders (QCO) for 663 products in coming days. Currently, there are 462 products covered under QCO’s.
However, 10 units located in the Northeast will continue to receive an extra 10 per cent concession.
Gold Hallmarking was voluntary in nature till June 16, 2021 and is a purity certification of Yellow metal. Thereafter, the Government has decided to implement mandatory gold hallmarking in a phased manner. In the first phase, it was made mandatory in 256 districts and 32 more districts were added in the second stage, taking the total number to 288 districts. 51 more districts are being added.
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