The Government has notified new guidelines for BIS Hallmark Licence Fees. Licence fee will now be known as Registration fees and it will be based on turnover in place population.

As per new guidelines following change in BIS hallmark licence fees for jewellers as below:

• Turnover up to Rs. 5 cr – Rs. 7500
• Turnover between Rs. 5 cr to Rs. 25 cr – Rs. 15000
• Turnover between Rs. 25 cr to Rs. 100 cr – Rs. 40000 and
• Turnover Above Rs. 100 cr – Rs. 80000

*This fees is for a period of 5 years.

Commenting on the latest development, Surendra Mehta, National Secretary, IBJA said, “Jewellers couldn't have asked for anything better! A large section of jewellers have turnover of less than Rs. 5 crore and the fees is Rs. 7,500 for 5 years, which is good. If you look at Excise regime, only 1700 jewellers had turnover above Rs. 15 crore. Let us presume that around 1000 to 2000 jewellers would have turnover beyond Rs. 25 crore, then upto Rs. 25 crore fees is only 15000 for 5 years, so isn’t it beneficial?”

Mandatory hallmarking is yet to be implemented in the country and is expected to come into effect in the month of July. However, government has not announced a fixed date for it. Consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan had said on several occasions in the past, that hallmarking would be implemented soon.

“The BIS rules which were notified earlier and NITI Ayog report are contradictory to each other. I presume that the Government is in a fix over what is to be done. The 2016 notification says that jewellers are responsible for wrong purity hallmarking while NITI Ayog in its report opposed the idea of holding jewellers responsible for purity hallmarked by AHCs. Let us expect that compulsory hallmarking comes into effect from 1^st July onward. And we are expecting that the Government would give around 6 to 9 months to clear non-hallmarked stock,” added Surendra Mehta.