SJC gold bars are sold at a shop in Hanoi. (Photo: VNA) At a recent meeting, Hong said according to the country’s policy to restrictgold supply sources with an aim to fight dollarisation and goldisation in the domestic economy, the SBV has notsupplied gold for the domestic market since 2014 so jewellery producers have touse SJC gold bars as raw materials.
Due to the restricted supply and the sharp price hike of gold in the worldmarket, domestic gold traders have to defend and reserve gold because they do notknow how the world gold price will fluctuate, which pushes up the local goldprice, according to the governor.
The governor also said the price gap between SJC gold bars and other types ofgold bars is reasonable.
According to Hong, many gold enterprises have confirmed that no enterprisebenefits from the price gap between SJC gold bars and other types. If peoplechoose to buy SJC gold bars, which are more expensive than others, they cansell them at a higher price.
State management agencies have inspected and confirmed that no enterprise canmanipulate SJC gold bars to benefit from the gap.
At the meeting, representatives of gold enterprises said the price gap was notdesirable as the larger the gap is, the higher risk they face.
As for the scarcity of gold bars and gold raw materials in the local market,gold trading enterprises said it was because of an imbalance between goldsupply and demand.
Le Thuy Hang, General Director of SJC Company, said the SJC gold bar brand hadbeen selected by the Government and the SBV as the national gold brand since2012. The production of SJC gold bars had been strictly managed by the SBV.
Hang affirmed her company was completely unprofitable from the gap between SJCgold bars and other types of gold bars. The company had fully complied with theSBV’s direction for the past ten years. SJC's net profit even decreased frommore than 300 billion VND yearly before 2012 to only 74-80 billion VND currently.
For the gold price in the domestic market, SJC is not a manipulator because theprice is determined by supply and demand of the market. All gold tradersunderstand that no enterprise can manipulate the price, according to Hang.
According to Nguyen Thanh Long, chairman of the Vietnam Gold TradersAssociation (VGTA), the SBV should license qualified enterprises to import rawgold to produce jewellery.
Long said, currently, jewellery production enterprises were not allowed toimport gold materials so they mainly have to buy in the market, which causesunstable local gold prices. The allowance will contribute to narrowing the gapbetween domestic and international gold prices.
Hong said the SBV would study carefully to encourage the development of thejewellery production industry with a fair competition./.
VNA
