24K bullion and ring prices respectively surged 0.37% to VND81.25 million (US$3,290) and 0.29% to VND68 million per tael at noon on Thursday, and at that time the Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) store on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street in HCMC’s District 3 was filled with customers.

Hanh of District 5 said he prefers to keep his money in gold instead of a bank account.

He usually buys bullion but decided to switch to gold rings since the government has floated the idea of abolishing SJC’s bullion monopoly.

Buying gold is his way of accumulating wealth in the long term, and so prices do not bother him, he said.

A buyer from Tra Vinh Province said she told her son to go to an SJC store to sell the 10 taels of gold bars she had been saving for years and buy gold rings.

“They have the same purity, yet gold rings are much cheaper than gold bars, and so I switched to that. For me, gold is still better than deposits for wealth preservation.”

An SJC store employee said there has been a rush to buy rings in the past few days, and the store is running out of stock.

“This has never happened before.”

Other jewelry brands like DOJI and PNJ do not usually keep large stocks of 24K gold rings, and so they quickly ran out as demand soared.

On Thursday morning a PNJ store in District 5 only had 10 two-tael gold rings left and a customer came in and bought all of them, an employee recounted.

“The entire [PNJ] chain is low on supply and it is unclear when stocks will be replenished. So we currently prioritize selling to buyers who place orders in advance.”

A DOJI store in the same district received 200 taels of gold rings in the morning and sold the entire lot by afternoon, with one customer buying 135 taels.

Traditionally 24K gold rings are bought as gifts despite the fact they have the same purity as bars.

They have become popular ever since Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh announced recently plans to narrow the gap between Vietnamese and international bullion gold prices.

As of Friday morning, SJC 24K gold ring prices has increased to VND68.3 million per tael, while bullion slid to VND81.5 million.