We recently met with Ms. Cuc, Deputy General Director cum CFO at PNJ. She was quite open and upbeat about the company’s operations thus far. The first half of this year was tough for PNJ with total sales dropping but its core business – jewellery sales was still resilient dropping just 5.5% despite a difficult economic backdrop. In general, management expect business to remain challenging in the remaining months of 2012 amidst weak consumption.