HUID: Paralyzed by incapacity

The one clarity about hallmarking and HUID at present is that there is none. Here’s the long and short of the HUID capacity constraint.

- Soma Bhatta, Shubham Dasgupta

Inclusion of the six digit unique identification on every piece of jewellery has thrown the entire supply chain operations out of gear. There is discontent and dissatisfaction brewing in the industry over inadequate capacity of the hallmarking centers, glitches in the technology aiding HUID allocation, and plethora of unanswered queries.

POOR INFRASTRUCTURE

With HUID comes the burden of activating about 7 crore SKUs in the Indian gold jewellery market. GJC director Dinesh Jain explains, “India imports 900 tonnes of gold. About 12 crore pieces are sold each year. If we exclude 40 percent of the pieces that belong to the category that doesn’t come under mandatory hallmarking, then about 7 crore pieces in the existing stock need HUID,” says Dinesh Jain.

According to him, the existing 933 laboratories have hallmarked 39-40 lakh pieces at an average of about 1 lakh pieces per day. So, it will take 500 days (18 months) to hallmark the current stock of gold jewellery in the country.

He reasons, “Even if the laboratories operate at their best potential of 2 lakh pieces per day, they will be able to hallmark the existing stock in 265 days (9 months). What happens to the fresh stock that is being created in the current year based on the demand from customers during the peak festive seasons?” he worries.

Worsening this issue is the cancellation of licenses of 73 hallmarking centers because of noncompliance. Sharing a perspective on the influx of first-time retailers in BIS registration, Jain says that within weeks of the law being made mandatory, the number of jewellers registered with BIS has increased from 40,000 to 80,000.