Business

Gold touches new peak

Local dealers concerned over declining business.

Faryal Najeeb June 03, 2011

KARACHI:

Gold prices inclined by Rs257 on Thursday and touched fresh peak at Rs42,642 per 10 grams as its international prices also moved up. The per tola prices of the precious metal also increased by Rs300 to Rs49,750.

Gold had previously hit a record on May 21 when it had closed at Rs42,512 per 10 grams. Local dealers said that despite the wedding season, buyers were scarce. They said that even though gold jewellery makers were designing light-weight jewelleries to keep prices at a minimum, customers were not willing to buy gold.

One dealer said that earlier gold sets were designed with a minimum weight of five grams [in gold measurement]. “Now we even have sets with only 1.5 grams of gold in them - a thing that was completely unheard of,” he added.

Dealers said that despite this people preferred artificial or silver jewellery. “This has made business difficult for us and any news of gold prices rising further is bad news for us,” another dealer said.

In the international bullion market, gold closed at $1543 an ounce on Thursday, against Wednesday’s close of $1,531.50.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2011.

COMMENTS (1)

Zia Khatri | 13 years ago | Reply Inflation simply means paper money losing its value by a certain percentage. Inflation raises precious metals value in monetary terms. Those jewellers who fail to switch their business partially or fully to Silver will end up losing their Gold business. In next 2-3 years more money will be poured into Silver rather than Gold as its already happening in USA, China, India and few other developed countries. Its up to Pakistanis to be a leader rather than laggards.

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