Brilliant: every fifth piece of jewelry is a fake
Every fifth piece of jewelry on store shelves may turn out to be fake. Experts estimate the current volume of counterfeit goods in the Russian Federation at 15-20% of the total market, which is 56 billion rubles. To solve this problem, the authorities want to tighten the rules for the sale of jewelry. The Ministry of Finance has prepared a draft resolution (Izvestia has studied it). Stores will be required to post a printed "consumer memo" on how to check jewelry. Russians will have simple instructions on how to identify the authenticity of the stamp and marking. Whether the new measures will help whitewash the market is in the Izvestia article.
How will the rules for the sale of jewelry change?
Fake jewelry is a very significant problem in Russia, experts interviewed by Izvestia said. To solve it, the authorities plan to tighten the rules for the sale of such products. The Ministry of Finance has prepared a corresponding draft resolution (Izvestia has it).
Stores will be required to post a printed "consumer memo" on how to check jewelry. The product card will show the registration number of the object in the state system of GIIS DMDK and a special two-dimensional code leading to the official registry, said Maxim Barashev, managing partner of BBNP law firm, member of Moscow Business Russia.
The presence of a printed memo will allow Russians to receive simple and clear instructions directly in the store on how to identify the authenticity of the stamp and marking, the press service of the Ministry of Finance told Izvestia.
Currently, not all consumers are aware of the possibility of verifying jewelry by scanning a two-dimensional barcode or entering a unique identification number (designed to verify the authenticity and tracking of goods), the Federal Assay Chamber told Izvestia. The adoption of the draft resolution will help to raise awareness among Russians about the goods they purchase and reduce demand in the shadow market, they added. This innovation will not entail any additional costs for market participants — you just need to print the memo and the QR code from the website of the Federal Assay Chamber, they noted.
Also, coins are required to have a mandatory label with the name, metal, weight and batch number. According to the explanatory documents, in general, the costs of market players for six years from the date of entry into force of the changes can range from 300 million to 3 billion rubles. The new rules should be in effect from March 1, 2026.
Shops are often caught selling fakes. So, in 2024, a resident of Moscow announced plans to sue an unnamed large jewelry chain after she bought a cheap ring at one of the stores for the price of diamond jewelry. The company's call center confirmed that the product does not match the description in the documents.
Earlier in the Tula region, the police revealed that an employee of a jewelry store was selling gold-plated jewelry to customers instead of gold jewelry.
What is the volume of fake jewelry in Russia
The initiatives of the Ministry of Finance in the field of combating counterfeiting are long overdue, the introduction of unique numbers on labels and mandatory memos for buyers is the right step, although somewhat belated, believes Vyacheslav Mishchenko, an expert at the Presidential Academy.
Back in 2019, the illegal turnover of jewelry, according to the Ministry of Finance, reached 70%, the expert said.
The situation has improved since then, but there are still many fakes. Officially, the authorities do not disclose the volume of illegal products. In general, by the end of 2024, the turnover of the Russian jewelry market reached 281 billion rubles.
The share of counterfeit and counterfeit goods can currently reach up to 20% of the market annually (that is, about 56 billion rubles), estimated Svetlana Ilyashenko, associate professor of the Basic Department of Trade Policy at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics.
The share of costume jewelry sold under the guise of jewelry in retail chains can be 15% (up to 42 billion rubles) of the total volume, according to independent analyst Andrey Barkhota.
At the same time, the share of jewelry sold where the quality characteristics do not match the declared ones is significantly higher and reaches 30%, he believes. This may include the use of gold of a different grade, less refined alloys, or the use of synthetic minerals. The measures of the Ministry of Finance can reduce the proportion of fakes by two to three times, the expert is sure.
— The main risk for buyers is financial losses. People overpay for gold-plated items, mistaking them for gold, or buy jewelry of the 375th grade instead of the declared 585th. An additional problem is the use of synthetic stones under the guise of natural ones," said Vyacheslav Mishchenko from the Presidential Academy.
On marketplaces, the risks are many times higher, since some sellers are not registered in the GIIS DMDK, he noted. In this regard, authentication is a useful measure, but it is necessary to train buyers to use these tools, he concluded.
It is quite difficult to distinguish fake precious metals, which contain up to 30% gold, from natural ones, which now creates additional difficulties for consumers and specialists, the Ministry of Finance explains to the document.
How will the new measures affect business
When adopting new measures, it is important to take into account the costs, says Vyacheslav Mishchenko from the Presidential Academy. Additional costs for meeting the new requirements are already estimated at about 800 rubles per product (for example, expenses for creating labels for coins, identification memos). This is a significant burden for manufacturers, and it is important that the fight against counterfeiting does not turn into problems for a bona fide business, he noted.
Due to the very high administrative burden on legal companies, some market participants are being de-registered with the Federal Assay Chamber and transferred to the shadow zone, said Vladimir Zboikov, executive director of the Delovaya Rossiya Committee on Precious Metals, Precious Stones, Jewelry and Folk Art Crafts.
"Informing customers is always useful, but what really matters to people is not so much the legality of the origin and turnover of products as their value or price—quality ratio," he said.
As Izvestia previously reported, the illegal precious metals market in the country is growing. For gold, it has already reached 20% — about 7 tons per year. Against this background, the authorities plan to tighten control over the turnover of investment coins made of precious metals. Banks and other market participants will be obligated to enter information about coin balances and turnover, as well as personal data of customers during any transactions, into the DMDK GIS.
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