Gold supply continues in surplus this year – GFMS
As always the latest GFMS update on its Gold 2014 report makes for interesting, if somewhat controversial, reading. Excerpt from commentary posted today on Mineweb.com – click on Mineweb.com to read full article. It’s also notable that some commentators take the latest GFMS update to show that India has re-overtaken China as the world’s largest gold consumer. We disagree – the figures just don’t add up!
Lawrence Williams
The latest update of the annual study by GFMS of world gold supply and demand makes for some interesting reading, and correspondingly interesting interpretations of the figures by the media. Mineweb has reported one such analysis suggesting that India has re-overtaken China as the World No. 1 gold consumer and some figures published within the report suggest that this may be the case – but this may well depend on what the interpretation of consumption actually is. The GFMS report suggests that Indian jewellery fabrication at 690 tonnes overtook that of China during the year, but appears to make no such bald statement that total Chinese demand fell back below that of India, although there are figures within the report which suggest this could be the case.
See: India overtakes China as world’s top gold consumer – GFMS
The GFMS report does note also, however, that Shanghai Gold Exchange (physical gold) withdrawals came in at just over 2,100 tonnes for the year and if this has not been ‘consumed’ one has to wonder where it is all going. Indeed even published figures on gold exports from Hong Kong, plus GFMS estimates on China’s own gold output come to a total of over 1200 tonnes alone and we have demonstrated here that Hong Kong is losing its place as being a proxy for total Chinese gold importshttps://lawrieongold.com/files/2015/01/30/. this was shown by noting the published data from the usgs that 32% of u.s. gold exports in october went to mainland china directly rather than via hong kong – a pattern which started in september………
To read full article on Mineweb.com click on: Gold supply to continue in surplus this year – GFMS