|
Low-cost foreign-made jewellery penetrating Vietnam
In the first months of the year, jewellery sales were very slow as people were tightening their belts in the economic downturn. But demand has recovered recently, and now foreign-made jewellery, especially China-made low-cost products, is landing in Vietnam.
Chairman of the HCM City Fine Arts, Silver and Gold Jewellery Association Nguyen Van Dung said that China-made jewellery first appeared in Vietnam five months ago, but more products have been available on the market recently. Dung said that retail jewellery shops in the Mekong Delta now always order made-in-China jewellery items from suppliers in HCM City instead of domestic products as previously.
Director of a jewellery company related that some Chinese businessmen came to see him directly to offer jewellery products and invited him to go to China to visit workshops. The businessmen showed diversified products, from bracelets to necklaces of different designs. They said that if Vietnamese companies placed orders, they would only ask for small deposits and would deliver in around seven or ten days.
“Some South Korean people came and they at first asked about machines that make jewellery. However, they later said that they know of a factory in China specialising in making jewellery and they wanted to offer some products,” the director of a company specialising in providing jewellery-making machines said.
According to the deputy general director of a big jewellery company in HCM City, the import tariff on gold jewellery is high, at 40 percent. Therefore, he believes that China-made jewellery is arriving in Vietnam through unofficial channels.
A made-in-Vietnam jewellery item designed in an Italian style is now selling at 32 million dong and has the original price of 28 million dong. Meanwhile, a China-sourced similar product has the original price of 18-20 million dong only.
Some enterprises are now offering to sell jewellery which they say comes from Italy. However, insiders well know that these are, in fact, Chinese products.
The production costs of this Chinese jewellery are very low. It they flood the market, domestic producers may have difficulty surviving.
Besides China-made jewellery, the market has seen some Indian people offering to sell diamonds. Some Singaporean businessmen have also been seen surveying the HCM City jewellery market. They have found out that the market still does not have 20K and 22K gold jewellery. Therefore, analysts have anticipated that 20K and 22K gold jewellery items will appear on the market soon.
Dung has warned that if more and more imports flow into the market, domestic goldsmiths will have to change their job as domestic workshops will not be able to compete with low-cost products.
Dung said that his association will send a document to relevant agencies to ask for supervision of imports and ask them to strengthen the fight against smuggling in order to minimise illegal imports.
vietnamnet, nld
|
