| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, November 14, 2001 |
Feature: Gold Demand Responds to Changed World |
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The world's gold demand for jewelry and personal investment responded to global events in the third quarter both before and after the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States, according to World Gold Council.
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The world's gold demand for jewelry and personal investment responded to global events in the third quarter both before and after the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States, according to World Gold Council.
A report released by the council on Wednesday indicated that the slowdown in global economic activity during the period and the volatile gold price after September 11 caused the global gold jewelry demand to fall 10 percent from year-earlier level to 649 tons.
But the council maintained that the increased global uncertainty following the terrorist attacks caused a rise in safe-haven buying of investment gold in a number of countries. This was particularly noticeable in countries such as Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and the United States, but with a lesser effects in a number of other countries, experts from the council said. Together with the issue of the Deutsche Mark commemorative coin,this pushed gold investment demand to 106 tons, 17 percent higher than the third quarter of 2000, they noted.
The council's latest statistics showed that the global overall gold demand for the third quarter of this year was 755 tons, 7 percent below year-earlier levels, bringing demand for the year-to-date to 2,356 tons, 2 percent below that of for the first three quarters of last year.
In China, the removal of the state control over retail jewelry prices helped gold demand in the country to rise 9 percent from year-earlier levels to 50 tons in the third quarter, according to the council.
Despite the adverse impact of global economic downturn on many economies in East Asia, demand for gold rose strongly in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia for a combination of domestic and international reasons, recording an average 26 percent growth in the third quarter, according to experts on gold market research. Gold demand in Japan in the third quarter surged 37 percent to 35 tons, on the back of a significant 91 percent increase in investment purchases, and investment demand also drove overall gold demand in South Korea up 7 percent to 31.5 tons in the quarter.
Also, the economic slowdown and sharp reduction in consumer spending after the terrorist attacks resulted in a 2 percent fall in jewelry demand in the United States, while jewelry demand in the Eurozone countries remained stable.
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