MANILA/MUMBAI – Blame poor rains or a lack of weddings, but Indians, for whom gold is the investment of choice, aren’t rushing to buy bullion after this week’s sharp sell-off.
India and China are the world’s top gold buyers and, after massive selling on the Shanghai Gold Exchange on Monday helped drive down gold prices by 4 percent to a 5-year low, traders hoped demand would perk up in India, or elsewhere in Asia.
The last big slide in gold prices – a 13 percent drop in just two consecutive trading days in April 2013 – prompted weeks of long queues of Indians outside gold showrooms.
Not this time. India’s gold appetite – it accounts for more than a fifth of global demand – remains sluggish, with only modest local premiums to the global spot benchmark.
“That’s really a bearish sign, when the main consuming region remains on the sidelines after such a price drop to a multi-year low,” Commerzbank senior oil analyst Carsten Fritsch told the Reuters Global Gold Forum on Tuesday.