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All that glitters is not gold
The Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the State Bank’s recent proposal requiring the government to impose a 10 per cent tariff on export jewellery with gold content of over 80 per cent instead of 99 per cent has triggered great public debate. VIR listens to the opinions of some leading industry experts.
Nguyen Thanh Long, chairman of Vietnam Gold Business Association
Introducing a ‘sanction’ towards export jewellery via the gold purity rate vehicle may force firms to deliberately lower the gold content to satisfy management authorities’ requirements. This would drive up expenses and hike loss rates in production.
Policies must be geared towards upholding market development. There needs to be close cooperation among competent state agencies to introduce suitable tax schemes which should be stable in the long term.
In my view, the MoF temporarily should not revise regulations in Circular 184/2010/TT-BTC guiding tariffs on gold of purity between 90-99.99 per cent and gold jewellery of above 99 per cent purity.
Nguyen The Hung, general director of Vietnam Gold Business and Investment Joint Stock Company
The government wants to restrict gold export. However, acting this way will promote illegal gold export when there is a big difference between the domestic and world market prices.
One of the factors helping to stabilise the dong-dollar exchange rate is the dollar volume sourced from gold exports. That is why commercial banks had fruitful dollar sources to sell to the central bank to hike the foreign currency reserves.
There needs to be a positive outlook towards gold export for economic development and stable tax policies that fit actual development conditions, thus promoting import export through official channel for the sake of macroeconomic stability.
The MoF imposing a 10 per cent tariff on export jewelry with a gold content of over 80 per cent is thus inappropriate given the current development context.
Tran Trong Quoc Khanh, director of ACB Gold Centre
In a time of high inflation firms can hardly access loans or incur high lending rates of over 20 per cent per year, it would be unreasonable when huge capital sources kept in the gold remain idle.
Gold export restrictions will badly affect employment of several hundred thousand goldsmiths in this tough economic climate. Gold import export policies must be flexible and close to practice to create a harmony between the domestic and world gold prices.
When the government is still unwilling to erase the gold export quota regime, some measures are needed to unblock the gold inward/outward flows.
Nguyen Van Giau, State Bank governor and National Assembly Economic Committee chairman
Vietnam’s bullion market features vibrant gold import export activities with no gold production. Gold export margins come from labour skills to bring the product added values and tax policies. That is why central bank must be prudent with gold export management, including the tax policies.
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