Dating back hundreds of years, the tical – equal to 0.576 ounces – has long served as the widely accepted unit of measure for gold though it has drawn criticism from both local and international gold sellers for making cross-border gold trade difficult.
‘’We are using grams instead of using traditional units of tical because we want to branch out a separate way from others. We also want Myanmar people to get into the habit of using grams. It’s a kind of preparation for [the Asean Economic Community set for] 2015,” said MGD director U Kyi Sein, adding that his firm has plans to sell gold to foreign markets.
Some gold traders said selling gold in grams might be a hard sell as it requires adjusting prices with the international markets.
“Gold prices are changing second by second, so if they want to succeed, they should avoid fixing the price and adjusting according to the world price otherwise it won’t work in here,” said U Tun Tun, president of the Mandalay Gold Association.
U Myo Aung, a gold trader in Mandalay, echoed the sentiment, saying, “It will be difficult if the gold bars are measured with grams because people are old-fashioned and they are used to traditional measurements.”
“I think selling gold in small sizes with the [international] price is a good idea, but it would be better if they began selling a wide variety of gold bars using traditional measurements like ta mat thar [one-fourth of a tical] and ngar muu thar [half a tical].”
source: The Myanmar Times
No comments:
Post a Comment