The State Bank of Vietnam, and relevant ministries, are hurrying to complete the draft regulations on the management of gold trading floors. The document has been long awaited by investors, which is believed to help stop the problems on the floors.

By December 2008, over 10 gold trading floors have been established and become operational. These do not include small transaction centers and the trading floors that have been established, but are not officially operational yet.

According to Huynh Trung Khanh, Advisor to the Gold Council in Vietnam, it has been slow-going in the promulgation of the regulations, as state management agencies still have to thoroughly consider the provisions of the document to ensure that they fit the society’s conditions. If the regulations are too strict, no one will join the gold trading floors, while loose regulations will make it difficult to settle complicated problems.

It remains unclear which agency will be responsible for the undertaking the state management over the operation of gold trading floors. In principle, the State Bank of Vietnam takes responsibility for foreign currencies management, and gold is considered a currency. However, the central bank does not take management over the commodity trading floors. Therefore, it remains unclear which management agencies gold trading floors will be put under.

The State Bank of Vietnam and relevant ministries have been urged to complete and promulgate the regulations on the operation of gold trading floors after troubles on the floors that have still not found the final answers.

Most recently, investors of the ACB gold trading floor threatened to take legal proceedings against the gold floor runner as the bank spontaneously accessed to investors’ accounts and made transactions from the accounts. The bank did that after it discovered that staff mistakenly announced the sale price at VND 17,000/tael, while the true price should have been VND 17million/tael.

Prior to that, in September 2008, the incidents in information updating occurred several times with Pho Wall (Wall Street) Gold Joint Stock Company. The fee for gold withdrawal was once mistakenly announced at VND 500,000, while it should have been VND 50,000.

The demand for gold in kind seems to be increasing towards Tet. However, sellers said that the purchasing power remains very low in comparison with previous years.

Source: VNN