Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

BIS norms to assess value of diamonds

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is formulating a set of standards to assess accurately the value of diamonds retailed through jewellery shops in the country.

This follows a spate of complaints received by the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs that the buyers rarely got their money’s worth when they purchased precious stones.

Jewellers commonly sell diamonds at inflated prices (often up to Rs.1 lakh for a stone valued at less than Rs.10,000) and buyers hardly get their investment back when they sell the jewels.

The Ministry has also proposed that BIS certification be made mandatory for gold jewellery in the interests of the consumer. Approximately 850 tonnes of gold is sold in India every year, much of it as jewellery.

There are an estimated 10,000 gold jewellery shops in Kerala, out of which only 400 have BIS certification.

State Legal Metrology Department enforcers say that there have been instances of jewellers deceiving buyers by inscribing 916 (the BIS hallmark for 22-carat gold) on non-hallmarked gold jewellery.

The BIS had recently cancelled the licence of an accredited gold purity testing centre in Chennai on the charge of fraudulently hallmarking gold jewellery.

R.C. Mathew, director, BIS (Kerala), says that consumers who insisted on buying only hallmarked jewellery should verify whether the 916 marking on the gold ornament is supplemented by four other marks: the one indicating the purity of the gold, the symbol of the assaying and hallmarking centre, a secret code (indicating the year in which the ornament’s purity was tested) and the logo of the seller.

Jewellers are required to provide customers with magnifying glasses to verify the minute certification marks.

Mr. Mathew says that the BIS had conducted a national-level market survey in 2006 to verify the purity of non-hallmarked jewellery. Out of 162 samples from 16 cities in the country, 90.12 failed the test of purity.

The BIS “shortage in purity” analysis showed the overall (all-India) average shortage in carat to be 3, with the shortage varying from 0.2 carat to 9.83 carat.

None of the samples from six cities (New Delhi, Kanpur, Pune, Jaipur, Madurai and Chandigarh) passed the test. The results varied in other cities.

Nine of 10 shops sampled in Thiruvananthapuram failed the purity test.

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