A gold mandi is a gold market, and mandi is simply the Urdu word for market. The phrase is trade vocabulary, and what most people searching it actually want is the rate.
What is a gold mandi?
A gold mandi is Pakistan’s gold market — the bazaar where bullion dealers and jewellers trade with each other, and the daily price that comes out of it. Mandi is the ordinary Urdu word for a market, as in sabzi mandi for vegetables or anaj mandi for grain.
Sarafa is the older, more precise word for the same trade, from sarraf, the money-changer and bullion dealer of the classical bazaar. Every large Pakistani city has a Sarafa Bazaar: a street or block of dealers, goldsmiths and jewellers buying from one another all day.
Where is Pakistan’s gold mandi?
Pakistan’s gold trade is concentrated in one cluster of streets per major city.
| City | Where the gold mandi sits | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Karachi | Sarafa Bazaar, Kharadar area of the old city, near Jodia Bazaar | Pakistan’s largest gold wholesale market; the headline rate originates here |
| Lahore | Sarafa Bazaar, inside the Shah Alami market area of the Walled City | Home of the Lahore Division Sarafa and Jewellers Association |
| Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Faisalabad, Multan, Quetta, Sargodha | Each has its own sarafa bazaar | Each with a local trade association |
City-to-city prices differ slightly — a few hundred rupees per tola — on local demand and dealer premiums. The metal is identical in Karachi and Lahore.
Who sets the gold mandi rate?
The daily benchmark for the country is published by the All Pakistan Sarafa Gems and Jewellers Association, working with the city associations. It is a trade body, not a regulator: jewellers agreeing the rate at which they deal with each other and with the public.
The number is derived from two inputs: the international gold price, quoted in US dollars per ounce, and the rupee-dollar exchange rate. That is why Pakistan’s rate can rise on a day when global gold is flat — a weaker rupee makes the same ounce cost more rupees.
Does the gold mandi rate change during the day?
Yes, it can. The associations publish once on a quiet day and more than once when international prices move sharply. Rate-tracking sites refresh far more often than the association announces, which is why two websites show different numbers for the same afternoon.
How gold is weighed in a mandi: tola, masha and ratti
Pakistan’s gold mandi quotes prices in tola, not grams.
| Unit | Relationship | In grams |
|---|---|---|
| Tola | The unit rates are quoted in | 11.6638 g |
| Masha | 1 tola = 12 masha | about 0.972 g |
| Ratti | 1 tola = 96 ratti | about 0.121 g |
Masha and ratti are older units you will still hear across the counter. The ratti is the smallest, historically the weight of a seed, still used for small stones and light pieces. Ask for the weight in grams on the receipt as well as in tola.
What do the karat numbers mean?
24K is pure gold, and everything below it is gold mixed with other metals for hardness, because pure gold is too soft for most jewellery. Gold mandi rates on 25 August 2026, 4:04pm PKT:
| Purity | Rate per tola |
|---|---|
| 24K | PKR 513,920 |
| 22K | PKR 470,751 |
| 21K | PKR 449,680 |
The pattern is arithmetic. 21K is priced at exactly 21/24 of the 24K rate and 22K very close to 22/24: the purity number is a fraction of pure, and the price follows the fraction. Decide karat before you shop — 24K for coins and holding, 21K or 22K for jewellery you will wear.
Gold moves daily, so use the live rate page rather than a figure printed in an article, including this one.
Why the gold mandi rate is not the price you pay
The gold mandi rate is a bullion rate: the price of the metal itself. What a shop sells is metal plus work, so the counter price is built up in four parts:
- Metal value — weight × the rate for that karat
- + making charges — the goldsmith’s labour, the design, the polish, the shop’s margin
- + wastage — metal genuinely lost in cutting, filing and soldering, as a percentage of weight
- + applicable taxes
Making charges are where the variation lives: commonly quoted from single digits on a plain machine-made chain up to twenty-odd percent on a hand-worked bridal set. No association publishes a figure, because it is negotiated and varies by shop and by piece.
What happens when you sell gold back to a mandi?
A jeweller buying gold back pays for the melt value of the metal — the gold, at the current rate, for its verified purity — and typically deducts for purity testing and for melting or refining.
The making charges you paid do not come back, because the buyer is purchasing metal rather than craftsmanship. On an ornate piece that gap can be substantial even if the gold rate has not moved.
Keep the receipt and any certificate, with the weight and purity written on them, because documented weight and purity make a buy-back conversation shorter and fairer. To hold value rather than wear it, plain forms like coins and bars carry far less of the cost that never comes back.
“If I bring this back, what do you pay and what do you deduct?” is a completely normal question to ask a jeweller in any gold mandi, and better asked before you pay than after.
Rates as of 25 August 2026, 4:04pm PKT, and they change daily. Making-charge ranges are typical market ranges, not quotes — confirm with your jeweller.
