Hallmarking Gold

Within the governments’ efforts to fight corruption a campaign has been launched to monitor the work of gold smiths and jewelers. Gold that doesn’t carry a hallmark or a stamp is considered illegal.

Hallmarking or stamping a piece of jewelry aims at standardizing that piece of jewelry so that the consumer is secure about its weight and karatage. This hallmarking or stamping in Syria is expensive and so jewelers end up paying more and charging more as a result.

Two gold smiths decided not to go through this procedure and so ended up selling gold at a cheaper price.

As a result their customers increased even though that goods they bought didn’t come with a receipt stamped by the guild of goldsmiths.

The Ministry of Finance has fined these two goldsmiths shops a million Syrian Liras each, despite a general empathy with the two goldsmiths.

Reem Haddad