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.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
RSS