SJC buys back dented and one-letter gold bars from August 5

Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) has just announced to buy back single-letter and dented gold bars from August 5. This decision was made after the State Bank granted a processing limit for the gold that the company has in stock.

Previously, in the past two weeks, many people holding single-character gold bars (a series with one letter before the number, produced before 1996) were worried because SJC Company temporarily stopped buying. A similar situation also occurred with two-character gold bars (a series with two letters before the number, processed later) that were dented.

The reason is that the company still has about 1,000 taels of gold that it has purchased in the past two months. Meanwhile, the State Bank has not yet allowed this company to open a workshop to process and re-stamp gold. The remaining gold cannot be sold on the market. Therefore, the company has asked customers to wait until the above amount of gold is processed before it can buy it back.

"The process of waiting for a license to re-stamp dented and deformed gold bars into new ones took quite a long time, and the increased inventory affected the company's capital balance," said an SJC representative.

At a press conference in mid-May, Ms. Le Thuy Hang - General Director of SJC - said that according to Decree 24, the company is not allowed to stamp gold bars from raw gold. All stamping molds are handed over to the State Bank for management.

This enterprise is only allowed to re-stamp dented gold according to the annual quota. According to this year's business plan, SJC has a target of processing and re-stamping about 31,692 taels, a decrease of about 4,466 taels compared to last year.

SJC leaders have also repeatedly said that the State Bank strictly controls all stages of the processing of dented gold, and sends a monitoring team to verify before SJC opens the mold. The company itself will be at risk if it buys a lot of gold before it has finished processing the remaining inventory.

Sharing with reporters, Mr. Tran Thanh Hai - CEO of Vietnam Gold Investment and Trading Joint Stock Company (VGB) - said that one-character gold bars are also stamped from the same raw materials as two-character gold, but because they have been produced for a long time, many people think that they are limited. "The problem is that the State Bank does not know for sure how many taels of one-character gold there are to grant a re-stamping limit to SJC Company," he pointed out.

Therefore, this expert suggested that the monetary management agency should give SJC a quota to re-stamp, but according to a fixed quantity per capita (instead of a fixed amount per year). Mr. Hai suggested that priority should be given to those who still have the receipt from the time of the initial purchase of one-digit gold.