SJC told to rebrand gold bullion

SJC told to rebrand gold bullion

The State Bank of Viet Nam has authorised the Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) to process gold bullion of other brands and put the SJC brand on them beginning yesterday.

The company will also reprocess deformed gold bars of its own brand.

SJC chairman Le Hung Dung estimated the quanity of gold bullion of other brands and the deformed SJC ones currently held by credit institutions and gold trading companies at 350,000 taels, or 13 tonnes.

Dung said the company had the capacity to reprocess 53,000 taels of deformed SJC bullion without the need to assess gold quality.

To deal with the remaining quantity, the company was increasing its quality assessment capacity in terms of equipment and human resources, he said.

The Government's Decree 24 on the management of the gold business that took effect May 25 this year stipulates that the State will have a monopoly on gold bullion manufacturing.

It tasks the central bank with organising and managing the gold bullion manufacturing process.

In July, the central bank decided to select SJC as Viet Nam's gold brand, basing its decision on the company's prestige and dominant market share. The company would produce the bullion as ordered by the central bank.

The turning of gold bars of other brands into SJC is expected to help increase supply, thus narrow the gap between domestic and world market prices, which has exceeded VND2 million (US$100) per tael in recent days.

A year ago, the central bank had said "if domestic prices are higher than international prices by VND400,000 ($19), it was an indication of speculative activity in the market".

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