Transparency of the gold market from data, no more procedures
Gold through many generations, where are the invoices?
In the family’s asset storage box, Ms. T. – from former Ha Nam, now belonging to Ninh Binh province – currently holds about 3 taels of gold and 14 taels of jewelry gold. Three taels of gold still have handwritten invoices from the time of purchase. But with the jewelry gold, papers are almost gone. She shared that these items were bought by the family, accumulated scattered for a long time, some items have been over many decades.
Gold bought for so long, how can there be enough papers? I am only afraid that later, if I have to prove the origin, there will be more complicated procedures and paperwork,” Ms. T. said.
Once, when she needed money for her son, she used to take a part of the jewelry to sell. The store re-burned gold to determine the content and then bought it at a lower price than expected. After that time, she rarely thought about selling the remaining jewelry, but mainly wanted to save it for her son and grandchildren as souvenirs.
Many dishes are kept for a long time and then there is affection. Giving them to children and grandchildren is okay, but when they need money and have to sell them, I also regret it. If there are any regulations, I just hope the procedures are simple,” she confided.
Ms. T.’s story shows a problem when the gold market is increasingly required to be more transparent: New gold can gradually be linked to invoices and transaction data, but among the people there is still a quantity of gold that was bought, given or inherited many years ago without documents. Decree 232/2025/ND-CP, effective from October 10, 2025, has added many requirements to increase transparency. In which, gold buying and selling transactions worth 20 million VND or more per day of a customer must be paid through a bank account. Some gold business activities also have to store transaction data, use electronic invoices and connect to provide information to the State Bank.
However, these regulations do not mean that people currently have to present purchase invoices from decades ago before selling all gold assets. The question is if the market goes deeper into traceability and data management, how to handle the old gold that people are holding.
Follow the gold line instead of adding procedures
Talking to reporters, MSc. Le Thi Huong Tra – Lecturer at the Institute of Banking Science Research, Banking Academy – said that the same approach cannot be applied to newly circulated gold and assets that have been accumulated for a long time. “It is impossible to require people to present origin documents for all gold assets that have been held for many years,” Ms. Tra assessed.
According to experts, it is possible to study the mechanism of inspection and declaration so that old gold, gold accumulated for many years or inherited, can return to the official system when people have a need to trade.
Ms. Tra assessed that the more important principle is to gradually shift from “controlling each transaction” to monitoring based on data and risk levels. “If all transactions have to go through too many similar procedures, high compliance costs may inadvertently push a part of transactions into the informal sector,” Ms. Tra analyzed.
Accordingly, with the new gold flow entering the system, it is possible to move towards traceability from imported raw gold or purchased, produced, processed, distributed to the final transaction. Each official gold batch has information about weight, content, origin and is linked to electronic invoices and payment data.
Suitable information can be shared between the State Bank, tax authorities, customs, market management and money laundering prevention agencies to identify unusual transactions.
Ms. Tra said that the ultimate goal is to both increase the ability to trace the new gold flow and create a legal and convenient “entrance” for the amount of gold that people have held for a long time.
Market transparency needs to start from data that is good enough to manage gold flows, without causing additional procedures for people to own legal assets.
