Hyderabad: The gold merchants have now come up with a new idea to avoid being cashless, by attracting customers offering them discounts of 500Rs-1000Rs on purchasing of gold for cash transactions.
Yet another move by the Gold merchants to keep their business going and avoid suffering withdrawal issues from the banks.
The gold price was Rs 28,950 per tola on Thursday but the jewelers offered gold at Rs 28,000 per tola for cash transaction
“We don’t have any problem with small transactions with cash like purchases of one tola or lesser gold. But, in cases of big transactions from Rs 1 lakh and above, our cash is being held in banks in cases of card payments and banks are allowing us to withdraw only up to Rs 2 lakh. A few banks are implementing rationing system in withdrawals due to cash crisis and when we try to withdraw Rs 2 lakh, the cap, they ask us to withdraw only Rs 50,000 due to non-availability of cash. Why should we suffer when we want to withdraw our money?” said manager of one of the famous jewelry shops.
S. Sathish, a goldsmith from Shadnagar, explains that this tactic is only to make people think they are getting huge discount, by saying “Customers think that they are getting Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 cash back. But, they don’t observe the wastage charges, which will be about 16 per cent against 10-11 per cent. The wastage charge will cover the discount offered by jewellers” hence there would be no loss to jewelers despite these discounts, as reported in DC.