Pawun, Grams and Troy Ounces: Sri Lankan Gold Weights Made Simple

2026-08-12 5 min readGold Buyer Sri Lanka Team

Weight confusion is the most common cause of misunderstanding at a gold counter. Five minutes with these conversions puts you in complete control of the numbers.

The three units you will meet

1 pawun (sovereign) = 8 grams — the traditional Sri Lankan unit.
1 troy ounce = 31.1035 grams — the international trading unit.
1 gram — what the scale in front of you actually reads.

Converting quickly in your head

To convert grams to pawun, divide by eight. A 40 gram chain is five pawun. To convert a per-pawun rate to a per-gram rate, divide by eight as well. Any quote can be checked in seconds with this one number.

Why grams are the fairer basis

Grams allow fractional accuracy. Rounding a 37 gram parcel down to four pawun would cost you five grams of gold. Insist on a gram weight to two decimal places and a per gram rate.

Tip

Use our online gold calculator to convert your weight and karat into an estimated payout before you travel to a branch.

Scale accuracy

Ask that the scale is tared to zero in front of you and that the reading is visible from your side of the counter. This is standard practice at every Gold Buyer Sri Lanka branch.

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