Gold bars at SJC headquarters in District 3, March 2025
The State Bank is seeking comments on a draft amendment to Decree 24 on the management of gold trading activities, which will remove the monopoly mechanism for gold bar production. Instead, the management agency will control the market by granting import limits and licenses for each time to qualified credit institutions and businesses.
Accordingly, enterprises wishing to be licensed to produce gold bars must have a minimum charter capital of VND1,000 billion, and banks must have VND50,000 billion. These units must be on the list of entities licensed by the State Bank to buy and sell precious metals, must not have been penalized, or must have remedied any violations.
Currently, there are 38 businesses and banks licensed to trade in gold bars. However, based on the current charter capital scale, only a few "leading" businesses have charter capital of VND1,000 billion or more, such as PNJ, DOJI , and SJC.
On the banking side, Vietcombank, VPBank, Techcombank, BIDV, MB, VietinBank and Agribank are in the group with charter capital of over 50,000 billion VND.
In fact, experts have repeatedly pointed out that the monopoly of SJC gold bars and the lack of supply are the reasons for the high difference in domestic and international gold prices, sometimes up to nearly 20 million VND per tael. The monopoly of gold bars causes people to develop a preference for holding precious metals, leading to a shortage and long lines of people waiting to buy each time the gold price fluctuates.
The State Bank admits that maintaining the current gold bar monopoly policy is inappropriate. When the market lacks supply, the management agency must intervene and stabilize it by using foreign currency from the Exchange Rate Stabilization and Gold Market Management Fund (a component of the State foreign exchange reserves) to import international standard gold, then process it into gold bars and sell it on the market.
According to the draft, gold transactions of 20 million VND or more must be made by bank transfer and cannot be paid in cash. This is to ensure the requirements of customer information authentication, publicity and transparency.
The draft decree also adds a mechanism to increase the supply for the production of gold jewelry. Accordingly, businesses will be licensed to import gold bars and raw gold to produce gold bars and jewelry. They can also resell these raw materials to other units licensed to produce gold bars or trade in jewelry and handicrafts.
However, enterprises are only allowed to import gold bars and raw gold from manufacturers certified by the London Bullion Market Association (LMBA). Units must publish standards and gold content and have internal regulations on import, export and gold production...
Currently, businesses are only licensed to import gold for re-export to foreign markets. Over the past 10 years, businesses have not been licensed to import raw gold. Purchasing gold on the market is the only source for businesses to produce domestic gold jewelry. The leader of a gold business unit once said that at many times, they faced great difficulties with raw materials, without gold to make and sell.
HA (according to VnE)
Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/don-vi-nao-duoc-cap-phep-san-xuat-khi-bo-doc-quyen-vang-mieng-413951.html
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