There are three goods inspection centers nationwide, but there is no gold inspection center. Therefore, no one can come forward and certify the quality of gold in Vietnam.

If people come to gold shops to buy gold jewelry, they always hear the gold shops’ owners reassuring that the shops commit to sell pure gold. However, no one can verify  if the gold products are as pure as advertised by the shops’ owners.

At a gold shop on Hoang Hoa Tham street in Hanoi, when reporters expressed their worry about the title of gold, the shop’s owners tried to reassure them: “I only sell pure gold. If you still have doubts, you can have the jewelry examined. If you change your mind and do not want the products any more, I will buy them back”.

However, a worker at Xuan Xuan Gold Shop at No 71 Nguyen Trai Road in Hanoi affirmed that no jewelry product has a high level of pure gold because artisans always add some copper to make it easier to manipulate.

The woman affirmed that even big enterprises which have modern production equipment, also have to add some copper in order to obtain diversified designs. With some copper, gold will become firmer, and of course, the title of gold will be lower. However, no one knows how much copper has been added when manipulating jewelry products, except the gold shops.

That explains why Vietnamese people always purchase and sell gold at the same gold shops. When they sell gold jewelry at the gold shops at which they purchased the same products before, the shop owners will profit and they are ready to pay higher prices than other gold shops in order to retain loyal clients. In case gold shops have to purchase gold manipulated by other shops, they always try to push for low prices.

Dr Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, Editor in Chief of the Banking Journal, former Deputy Director of the Accountancy Department under the State Bank of Vietnam, said that the majority of gold jewelry available on the market have not gone inspections, therefore, no one can say for sure about their quality. This is also one of the reasons why gold jewelry cannot be deposited at banks as a kind of deposits. Commercial banks only accept the gold jewelry for the service of “keeping assets” or “leasing coffers”.

A question has been raised that if the state still doest not pay attention to the management of gold jewelry, is it paving a way for gold shops to swindle customers?

According to Tran Trong Quoc Khanh , Director of the Gold Center belonging to Asia Commercial Bank, in fact, the management over the quality of commercial gold, including jewelry, bullion gold and material gold in circulation on the market is clearly stipulated in the set of standards TCVN 7054:2002 released by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2002.

However, due to the lack of the cooperation among ministries and branches, and the lack of the punishment for people who trade substandard products, the regulations still have not been realized.

The standards clearly stipulate concepts about commercial gold, gold jewelry and bullion gold. Especially, the standards say that if a product is made of different parts of gold with different titles, every part of the new product must show a purity level of the part as a separate product, or the new product must show the title which is the average title of the different parts.

However, ignoring the laws, gold shops only provide vague information about the title of gold. Even the gold with copper mixture is still considered 99.99 gold and sold at high prices.

Experts believe that it is necessary for Vietnam to establish a national gold inspection center. There are three goods inspection centers nationwide, but there is no gold inspection center. That explains why several years ago, when the police investigated a gold smuggling case with a volume of gold up to 100 kilograms, the seized gold had to be brought to an enterprise for inspection.

Tuyet Ngan