Chandigarh, Nov 26 Hallmarking on gold jewellery shall be made mandatory from January 1, 2008 by the government, Mr Y P Singh, Additional Director General , Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) said today.Addressing a seminar on hallmarking of gold/silver jewellery, organized by BIS here, he informed that in order to promote gold hallmarking among consumers and bring more jewellers under assaying ambit, BIS is planning to spread its network of assaying and hallmarking centres in the country. Thirty five additional assaying centres will be set up by March next year, he added.The government shall be giving one time financial incentive of 15 per cent of the cost of machinery and equipments subject to maximum of Rs 15 lakhs per centre for hallmarking, he added.Mr Singh informed that according to an estimate there are more than three lakh jewellery retailers, manufacturers and over 100 large-scale units manufacturing jewellery in the country. He informed that BIS had conducted a market survey on 120 samples drawn from eight cities, which revealed failure of 88 per cent samples with average purity shortage of 11 per cent.Another market survey revealed that more than 90 per cent samples failed against the purity declared as wide as 44.66 per cent and average shortage of 13.5 per cent . In Chandigarh, all the 10 samples drawn failed with maximum shortage in purity of 18.71 per cent and average shortage of 10.4 per cent.Mr Singh said that uptil October 31 this year, 2,708 gold hallmarking licenses had been issued by BIS in the country. About 162 lakh pieces of gold, silver and artefacts had been hallmarked uptil October this year.