Post Lockdown Buy Back Of Gold

Challenges and Opportunities

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An unanticipated attack by Covid-19 and the decsion of lockdown has got the nation’s economy to stanstill. Also the businesses are shut, there is loss of job, people are facing cash crunch therefore giving birth to liquidity crises. In such situation, people often make use of their ‘Safe Heaven Assets’ that is gold. Since there is hike in gold prices, once the imposed lockdown is over to overcome the cash crunch people are expected to rush to the jewellery shops with their old jewellery to encash it.

To give an example, in a recent news, large number of people in Thailand were queued up to sell their old gold jewellery after the precious metal hit multi-year highs in local prices but on the other hand, Thailand Prime Minister requested people to sell their jewellery gradually so that the jewellers should not face liquidity crunch.

In India, to pass this situation, though the jewellery industry is already connecting through various webinars dicussing the post lockdown scenario, and the way forward to tackle the challenges, the question remains, whether post lockdown will the jewellers honour the committment they made while selling the jewellery? Will they have sufficient cash to buyback the gold? Will the organised jewellers take advantage of the situation by differenciating the buying and selling prices? Will the jewellers be able to deal smarlty with the customers without hurting them and retain the customers for future? Also what steps will be taken by associations like GJC, GJEPC, IBJA in co-ordination with the government to overcome this situation?

On this note, to give our readers an exclusive report, AOJ has spoken to leading industry experts who have shared their perceptions on post lockdown scenario for buyback of gold jewellery.