Jewellery stocks get shine back, gain up to 10%

Jewellery stocks today jumped by up to 10 percent after the government increased excise duty exemption limit for the small scale industry to Rs 10 crore from Rs 6 crore that could bring relief to gold jewellers.

On Wednesday, it also decided to waive the levy on sale of traded goods and relaxed other procedural norms.

Shares of Tara Jewels soared 10.21 percent, Shree Ganesh Jewellery House 9.5 percent and Gitanjali Gems 4.53 percent on BSE.

Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri rose 4.3 percent, PC Jeweller 3.53 percent and Titan Company 2.77 percent.

Accepting the recommendations of a panel, the Finance Ministry yesterday said no excise audit will be carried out for the first two years for units whose duty payment is less than Rs 1 crore (that is turnover of manufactured goods less than Rs 100 crore).

In view of large-scale protests by jewellers following Budget proposal of 1 percent excise duty on non-silver jewellery, the government had set up a sub-committee to interact with the industry on issues relating to compliance, maintenance of records and other administrative matters.

The government has also decided, independent of the committee's recommendations, to increase for jewellery manufacturers "the SSI eligibility limit from Rs 12 crore to Rs 15 crore and the SSI exemption limit from Rs 6 crore to Rs 10 crore in a financial year and Rs 85 lakh for March 2016".