Invest in jewellery for future gains — PMMC

Investing in gold jewellery could be beneficial to the buyer, as its value appreciates over time, the Managing Director of the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), Nana Akwasi Awuah, has stated.

He has, therefore, urged all to buy pieces of jewellery for use and keeps so as to reap the benefits when their value appreciates.

“We want to encourage everyone – mothers, fathers, men, women, young men, young women, that please, invest in gold jewellery and you will be very happy, 10, 15 to 20 years down the line that what you bought today at GH¢5,000 will turn out to be about GH¢50,000,” he said.

New shop

Mr Awuah made this assertion when he opened the PMMC’s latest and second largest shop outlet in the country, at the Marina Shopping Mall, off the Spintex Road in Accra last Tuesday.

It has on display trinkets, necklaces, rings, pendants, ear rings and other forms of jewellery made from gold (white, yellow, rose), diamonds, precious stones, and other minerals.

It also has an executive lounge where clients, including tourists who would be there for longer periods to transact business, would be attended to.

The new shop brings to seven, the outlets of the PMMC across the country. The others are the headquarters (Diamond House) at Tudu in Accra; Osu; Tema; East Legon in Accra; Adum, Jubilee Mall and Prempeh I International Airport in Kumasi.

Cutting the tape to open the shop, Mr Awuah said: “I am 100 per cent positive that his shop will do as well as all the other shops that we have opened so far in the country.

One thing that we have also done to improve our jewellery is that we have invested in technology.”

He said the PMMC had invested in 3D laser printing machines that could create all forms of sophisticated designs, mentioning that it was the company that crafted the Maze in Parliament and so it was capable of producing amazing designs.

Explaining the rationale behind opening of the new shop, Mr Awuah said “Looking at the way the company was growing and the kind of brand that we wanted to build for the company, it had become imperative to move locations, so in our quest to identify a new location we found this place.”

“Here is strategic for so many reasons. Everybody knows the kind of human traffic at Spintex and having a shop on the Spintex Road is strategic in terms of customer base and serving this part of the Greater Accra Region so that customers do not have to travel all the way to Accra or East Legon for our services.”

For everyone

Showing the PMMC MD round, the Deputy Managing Director in Charge of Administration, Ms Josephine Agyekum-Wallace, said there was jewellery as low as 2.5 or lower grams “because we don’t want it to look like everyone must be a rich person to buy gold jewellery. Every average person can afford it.”

She said they could also produce customised jewellery for customers including that for royalty, using 18 karat gold and above when requested, and did lay away, where customers could pay in instalments for three months to procure jewellery.

“We are also encouraging corporate sales that organisations do collateral for their employees if they want to buy and they will be deducted at source and sent to us, and we can also send our wares to them if they want to buy from us,” she added.

She said the jewellery shop also did buy back, where they could take back jewellery from a customer and remould it.

PMMC

PMMC, which was established in 1963 as Ghana Diamond Marketing Board charged with the sole responsibility of the purchase and marketing of Ghana’s diamonds, and was in 1965 incorporated as a State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), now operates as the government’s assayer with the sole mandate of assaying all gold that leaves the country.

The jewellery production is also a subsidiary of the company which has since the year 2000 been converted into a limited liability company.