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.

By Reuters
Sunday November 26, 10:05 PM
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Oil producing nations are exploiting oil consuming countries with high oil prices and India is being deprived of 1 percent of economic growth because of costly oil, its finance minister said on Sunday.
Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told a regional World Economic Forum that speculation was driving oil prices, as prices had fallen from near $80 a barrel to $58 when there had been no change in demand and little change in supply.
"I continue to say that it is speculation driven and the world must come to some kind of understanding between oil producing countries and oil consuming countries to how these shocks can be reduced. We are at risk here," he said.
India imports 70 percent of its oil. The Asian Development Bank says every $10 rise in average global oil prices over a one-year period hurts Asia's economic growth by 0.6 percentage points.
"The world must come to terms with the fact that oil producing countries are exploiting the requirement of oil consuming countries," Chidambaram said.
"India's being robbed of at least 1 percent of growth because of high oil prices."
India's economy, Asia's fourth largest, is forecast to grow about 8 percent in the fiscal year to March 2007, although the government is keen to boost this to nearer 10 percent to bring down its fiscal deficit and lift nearly a quarter of the population out of poverty.
Oil's descent from a record of $78.40 in July prompted OPEC in October to cut oil output by 1.2 million barrels per day from Nov. 1.
Prices over the past few weeks have dipped below $55 before rebounding to about $60 on Friday.
"It's not in our hands. Until we search for more oil and gas reserves we are dependent on the world," Chidambaram said.