Jewellery shops in Kochi see few customers due to rise in price of gold

Kochi (Kerala) [India], July 23 (ANI): The price of gold rose by Rs 520 in Kerala on Wednesday and touched an all-time high of Rs 37,280 per sovereign. One gram of gold now costs Rs 4,660.
With jewellers facing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and hike in prices, shops bear almost deserted look as people are not buying gold these days.
Rajeev Paul, Managing Director of Chungath Jewellery, Kochi, said that the prices of gold are set to rise even higher.
"The jewellers are facing a difficult time right now as the prices have gone up. People are hesitant to buy gold right now," Paul told ANI.
"What will happen now is people will try to sell their gold and get as much liquidity and put it in some other resource. What we feel is that there could be a rush for selling gold in the next two-three weeks," he said.
Paul said that there were restrictions imposed due to the pandemic, where jewellers can only attend to at most five customers at the store.
He hoped that things will improve after about a month.
Right now, the season is quite bad as we don't have marriages going on. Maybe after one month, the season will start picking up. It is because of the restrictions due to COVID we can only take up to five customers at a time," he said.
"What we are doing right now is that we are giving an appointment and as soon as we get five customers, others are made to wait. But all these things will settle down and people will also accept the price. We expect the price to come down once the COVID situation is over," he added. (ANI)