Soaring gold prices led Indian buyers to choose coins and bars over jewelry during the Dhanteras festival on Saturday, fueled by hopes that the precious metal’s glittering rally would continue, industry officials said.
Dhanteras, which marks the start of the five-day Diwali festival of lights, is considered auspicious for buying gold and is one of the busiest gold-buying days in the world’s second-biggest consumer of the metal.
Gold sales during Dhanteras were 10 to 15 percent lower in volume terms compared with last year, but total value rose sharply due to higher prices, All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council chairman Rajesh Rokde said.
Photo: AP
“Gold jewellery demand took a hit with record-high prices, dropping nearly 30 percent from last year, but coins and bars were flying off the shelves,” India Bullion and Jewellers Association secretary Surendra Mehta said.
In India, buyers typically pay 10 to 20 percent of the gold price as manufacturing charges for jewelry, making it even more expensive than buying gold coins.
Local gold prices closed at 127,008 rupees (US$1,444) per 10 grams on Friday after hitting a record high of 132,294 rupees, marking an increase of more than 60 percent since last year’s Dhanteras. India’s NSE Nifty 50 share index has risen about 5 percent during the period.
Facing record price surges, the industry is offering healthy discounts on jewelry making to maintain strong gold-buying interest throughout the festive and upcoming wedding seasons, World Gold Council head for Indian operations Sachin Jain said.
Indian dealers were this week quoting a premium of up to US$25 per ounce over official domestic prices, inclusive of 6 percent import and 3 percent sales levies, the highest in more than a decade.
Meanwhile, demand for silver coins, bars and jewelry is strong this year, driven by the metal’s stellar price rally, PNG Jewellers Pvt Ltd chairman Saurabh Gadgil said. Investors believe silver could outperform gold, dealers said.
Higher returns from precious metals have been attracting strong inflows into physically backed gold and silver exchange-traded funds in recent months.
“With jewelry stores open till midnight and Dhanteras continuing into tomorrow afternoon, we expect buying momentum to carry forward,” Rokde said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS