VietNamNet Bridge – Jewelry companies had to wait for the State Bank of Vietnam’s nod to import gold materials for domestic processing. And now they have to wait for a circular from the Ministry of Science and Technology to turn this into reality.

The State Bank of Vietnam has agreed in principle to grant licenses to some jewelry companies to import materials for domestic processing. However, since the Ministry of Science and Technology has not released the circular on the quality standards of the imports, the licensed companies still cannot import gold.

According to Nguyen Hoang Minh, Deputy Director of the HCM City branch of the State Bank of Vietnam, the import of gold materials and the manipulation process all have to follow strict procedures. Therefore, the HCM City branch has asked the State Bank to set up the procedures.

Meanwhile, a senior official of the State Bank of Vietnam said under the Decree No. 24, the Ministry of Science and Technology, together with relevant ministries and branches to issue a circular that stipulates the required quality standards for gold jewelries, fine arts, inspect and control the jewelries in circulation and verify the measuring tools of gold trade companies.

Therefore, the State Bank still needs to await the Ministry of Science and Technology’s circular to draw up the licensing and post-licensing management procedures.

The Decree No. 24 took valid in May 2012, but the circular on the jewelry gold quality standards has not been issued yet. As such, enterprises will have to wait for the guidance from not only one, but two ministries.

According to Minh, the State Bank has received the applications for the licenses for importing materials from PNJ, VJC and SJC. The State Bank has given the nod to PNJ and VJC, while SJC still needs to add some more documents and information.

VJC has got the license to import one ton of gold materials and PNJ 1.3 tons. However, they will not import the allowed amounts at once, but will import in many different consignments, with no more than 100 kilos each time.

The deputy general director of a big jewelry company in HCM City complained that it’s still unclear how long more companies have to wait. For the time being, the jewelry industry has fallen into big difficulties because of the lack of materials.

If the management agencies still delay the issuance of legal documents, the situation of the enterprises would be even worse.

Vietnam has been trying to export jewelries, but the success is modest, partially because of the technology problems. However, the major reason is that domestic jewelry companies have to buy materials from domestic sources at high prices, which makes the domestic products uncompetitive with the products from other countries.

According to Nguyen Van Dung, Chair of the HCM City Fine Arts, Jewelry Association, the association has made three proposals to the HCM City branch of the State Bank.

First, jewelry companies want the watchdog agencies to allow all the capable companies to import materials

Second, the State Bank sells materials to the companies which are not financially capable to import materials.

Third, commercial banks lend money to enterprises to buy gold materials.

TBKTSG