There is a huge disparity between what the Chinese Central Bank apparently sees as gold demand and that estimated/calculated by the global analytical community. The figures seem to be continually diverging and here we utilise known official data to draw our own conclusions as to what the real figures might be.
As a base we are assuming that supply to the market is roughly balanced by demand. There is an element of well substantiated data from Chinese and non-Chinese sources available which may give us a fairly good idea of the minimum supply levels potentially available to Chinese consumers. But given China’s non-reporting of direct gold imports this certainly does not present anything like a full picture.
First we have China’s domestic gold output which this year is estimated to reach perhaps 480 tonnes. Secondly we have net gold imports via Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Statistical office reports these on a monthly basis in a throwback to the Special Administrative Region’s former British-based bureaucracy, and net exports from this source to the Chinese mainland by the end of August totalled 485 tonnes, and given the tail end of the year usually produces some strong figures, a conservative estimate for this year’s total net gold imports from Hong Kong would be around 650 tonnes.
But there’s more. Switzerland exports gold both to Hong Kong and directly to mainland China, as does the UK. Recent changes in China’s permitted import routes for gold also mean that nowadays an important part of the gold exports from these countries does go directly to the Chinese mainland, bypassing Hong Kong altogether. For example, the UK started exporting gold directly to mainland China from April last year and through to the year end sent a little over 110 tonnes by this route. This year, after zero exports in January and February, it has exported around another 110 tonnes in the following four months to end June so it would not be unreasonable to assume that around 250 tonnes, perhaps more, will flow by this route into mainland China over the full year.
Likewise Switzerland has exported a little over 145 tonnes of gold directly to the Chinese mainland in the seven months to end July this year – again suggesting a full year total of around 250 tonnes.
So, if we add together the total of net projected Chinese gold imports for FY 2015 from Hong Kong, Switzerland and the UK and add in China’s own estimated domestic production for the year we are already seeing a total of 1,630 tonnes. Add to this unquantified direct imports from other nations and additional supply from domestic scrap we are probably coming up with a figure of perhaps closer to 2,000 tonnes, which is far nearer the SGE withdrawals figures than the mainstream analysts’ figures might suggest.
The big question is, though, is a significant proportion of the Chinese available new gold supply going into the Central Bank rather than in to retail consumption? Chinese officials tell us that the People’s Bank of China does not source gold from the SGE – but the country is also currently announcing perhaps an intake of around 14 tonnes a month since it began reporting these figures 3 months ago. If this is indicative of likely central bank purchases over the full year then this would total around 170 tonnes, which presumably is coming from somewhere.
And western analysts are dubious about levels of Chinese government purchases of gold anyway, mostly assuming them to be far higher than officially stated with gold being held in other government accounts not reported to the IMF. Additional monetary gold, which is not reported in export statistics from countries like the UK, could also be going to China directly – see Koos Jansen’s latest article on this: The London Float And PBOC Gold Purchases.
If we ignore for the moment possible direct imports by the PBoC, the amount of available ‘new’ gold to the Chinese market would be the 2,000 tonnes estimated above and the analysts’ estimates of Chinese gold consumption currently of around less than half this level leaves ca. 1,000 tonnes plus of supplied gold unaccounted for, some of which may be going into the financial sector, which does not tend to be recorded in analysts’ figures for consumption. But again this is probably a relatively small amount. So the question is where is this excess gold all going? This suggests the analyst figures are substantially under-estimating true Chinese consumption. With the SGE figures indicating an even wider discrepancy there are even more questions about total Chinese gold inflows unanswered. Perhaps there are indeed elements of double counting in the SGE figures, but probably not sufficient to account for the huge differences being seen.
But whatever the real figures are, known gold exports into China plus the country’s own production, account for probably at least 50% more gold than the analysts reckon China is consuming – and these totals almost certainly under-estimate the true picture. And what matters to the gold marketplace in terms of supply/demand fundamentals is the total amount of gold flowing into China from the West – not just whatever the analysts classify as consumption.
The COMEX Warehouse situation: While there may indeed be no shortage of physical metal in the overall COMEX gold warehousing system, the registered stocks (i.e. immediately available amount of physical metal) have indeed diminished and are currently down to around 5 tonnes only. As Jeff Christian has pointed out recently, though, this low number is not an immediate cause for concern as COMEX is primarily a futures market and little actual physical gold passes through it, while there are still big ‘eligible’ stocks held by the bullion banks some of which could be transferred to meet commitments if necessary. But the low registered stock level is yet another probable indicator of continuing gold flows from West to East. It should also perhaps be pointed out that the numbers here are actually quite small compared with overall gold trade with the total fall in eligible plus registered stocks only down around a little over 30 tonnes year to date. Given continuing gold inflows into the COMEX warehousing system, of course, the total gross outflow will have been considerably higher, but reports of a pending supply squeeze should perhaps be disregarded given the overall total holdings of eligible plus registered stocks in the COMEX warehouses.
