Tag: asia

Switzerland already exported 600 tonnes of gold to Asia this year

Asian countries together imported over 600 tonnes of gold in the first six months of this year, according to the latest figures from the Swiss Customs Administration. Despite the fact that gold exports to Asia have come down a little over the last few months, the total year-to-date is still on par with the amounts of gold exported in the first half of last year. A decline in the price of gold and the expectation of rising rates in the US so far didn’t impact gold demand in Asia to the downside.

Asia keeps buying gold

The countries importing the largest volumes of gold from Switzerland in June were India (21.48 tonnes), Hong Kong (15.91 tonnes), China (14.04 tonnes), Iran (12.85 tonnes) and Singapore (6.64 tonnes). With the exception of Iran, these are the countries importing the biggest volumes of gold on a very regular basis.

Looking at the total exports of gold over the first six months of this year, we see India and Hong Kong in the lead with about 210 tonnes of gold imported each. China takes the third position, importing 137,5 tonnes of gold from Switzerland in the first half of this year. Singapore and Saudi-Arabia fill the fourth and fifth position with gold imports of 61 and 28,5 tonnes of gold respectively.

From all the gold Switzerland has exported in the first half of 2015, more than 90% went to emerging Asian economies. All the other countries combined take up the remaining less that 10% of total gold buying from Switzerland. The first graph shows the monthly net gold exports, the second one shows the cumulative volume of the same exports.

Monthly net gold exports from Switzerland

Total net gold exports from Switzerland in first half of 2015

29 juli 2015
Swiss Gold Exports to Asia: 1,200 tonnes in 2014
Switzerland has exported 1,200 tonnes of gold to Asia in 2014, according to the latest data released by the Swiss Customs Administration. The biggest buyers of gold were in the Far East: India (471 tonnes), Hong Kong (367 tonnes) and Mainland China (213 tonnes). Singapore also got a lot of gold out of Switzerland last year, in total 128 tonnes. Saudi-Arabia came in fifth with net gold imports of 60 tonnes.

Which countries imported gold from Switzerland in 2014?

We didn’t only look at the gold trade figures per country, they went a step further and analyzed the gold flows between the main regions of the world. This analysis shows that, while most gold went to Asia, also a small amount of 74 tonnes was bought by the oil-producing countries in the Middle-East. The rest of the world was a net supplier of gold to Switzerland. Large suppliers of gold were Latin-American countries with 535 tonnes and African countries with 178 tonnes.

Net gold exports from Switzerland: Asian countries bought 1200 tonnes of gold in 2014

United Kingdom
European countries exported a total of 670 tonnes to Switzerland, more than any other region. The European figure however is grossly inflated by the 620 tonnes of gold moving from the gold vaults in London to the gold vaults in Switzerland. Just like Switzerland, London is still a main hub for physical gold storage and trade. Since 2013 large volumes of gold physically stored in London are being sold by investors and banks. If we leave this number out, Europe exported almost 50 tonnes of gold to Switzerland in 2014.

Which countries exported gold to Switzerland in 2014?

Switzerland
Switzerland is an important hub for physical gold storage and trade, because the country has a stable political and economical climate. The country is also well known for their friendliness towards foreign capital looking for a safe haven. Switzerland has many gold refineries and vaults and is capable of melting hundreds of tonnes of gold and storing many thousand tonnes of the precious metal. In 2014 a total of 122 countries traded gold or silver with Switzerland, the Swiss Customs data shows.
Gold moving from West to East
The numbers and graphs presented in this article confirm once again the flow of physical gold from developed countries in the West to surplus countries in the Middle East and Far East. African and Latin-American countries are producing a lot of gold these days, but they rarely keep the metal for themselves. Instead, they export it in huge quantities to more wealthy countries. The surplus countries in the East want to trade at least some of their foreign exchange reserves to something tangible like physical gold. They buy gold and will probably continue to do so in the near future. Related articles:
- Graph: Gold flowing to Asia
- Gold export from Switzerland to Asia: 600 tonnes
1,200 tonnes of gold moved from Switzerland to Asia in 2014
5 februari 2015
Gold export from Switzerland to Asia: 600 tonnes

According to the latest figures by the Swiss Customs Administration, the country has exported a total of more than 600 tonnes of gold to Asia in the first half of this year. Since the start of this year, the Swiss Customs Administration is obliged to provide more detailed information on international gold and silver trade. Every month they publish an update on the volume of precious metals being exported to and imported from other countries. We documented the gold flow to Asia earlier this month, see this article.

In the month of June, a net volume of 55,78 tonnes of yellow metal went from Switzerland to Asian countries, bringing the total gold exports to Asia for the first half of this year to 603,38 tonnes of gold. A small amount of gold found it’s destination in the Middle-East. Over the first half of this year, the net exports from Switzerland to the region were a modest 6,9 tonnes.

The regions supplying Switzerland with gold in the first half of 2014 were Europe (395,21 tonnes), South-America (227,44 tonnes), North-America (111,33 tonnes) and Africa (87,9 tonnes). Central-Asia and Middle-America exported a net volume of 39,6 and 13,65 tonnes to Switzerland. The graph below clearly shows the flow of physical gold to Asia. The dark colored bars show the net flow of yellow metal from and to Switzerland in the first five months of the year. The light colored bars represent the volume traded in June. As you can see, the trend continued in the past month.

Gold flowing to Asia through Switzerland

Gold flows to Asia
Question is which countries within Asia import so much precious metals from Switzerland. The following graph provides us with the answer. Most exports went to Hong Kong (239,37 tonnes), India (152 tonnes), China (88,93 tonnes) and Singapore (58,31 tonnes). A lot of the metal sent to Hong Kong is forwarded straight to China, as we know from the export numbers of the Hong Kong Census and Statistics department.

Gold exports from Switzerland to Asian countries
These two charts clearly capture the flow of gold to the rising economic powers in Asia, especially China, India and Singapore. But an even more condensed version of this development is presented below. A great cartoon by Merk Investments..

Gold as a weapon in a global currency war (Source: Merk Investments)

22 juli 2014
Graph: Gold flowing to Asia

More and more gold is flowing towards the emerging economic powers in Asia. We do not conclude this based on just anecdotal evidence, but also based on the Chinese gold imports through Hong Kong and the increasing flow of gold out of Switzerland and the United Kongdom. In April, Marketupdate published a chart of the gold flows in and out of Switzerland from the first quarter of this year, based on new data published by the Swiss Customs Administration. The gold trade data from Switzerland is not new, but this is the first year in which the import and export figures are available for each country individually. This gave us the opportunity to perform a more detailed analysis on the Swiss gold trade.

The following graphs show the net amount of gold flowing in and out of Switzerland during the first five months of this year. The first graph shows the countries which traded the largest amount of gold in Switzerland. The negative volumes represent the amount of gold flowing out of Switzerland to the country mentioned, while the positive bars show the amount of gold countries brought to the Swiss gold vaults. These results confirm the trend we have been talking about for a while now, the flow of physical gold to Asia and the Middle-East. This gold is mainly from ’the West’, more specifically the United States and the UK. The top five of countries getting gold out of Switzerland are Hong Kong, China, India, Singapore and Saudi-Arabia. The oil-producing countries also prove to have a strong appetite for physical gold, because the metal represents a long term store of value to them.

Asian countries withdraw the largest amount of gold from Switzerland

Gold flowing to Asia and the Middle-East
When we take the Swiss gold trade as a reference point for the gold market, we see a worldwide flow of gold towards Asia and the oil-producing countries in the Middle-East. When we combine the total trade volume between Switzerland and the rest of the world, we see a clear trend of gold moving from other continents towards the East. From January till May this year, a total volume of almost 550 tonnes of gold went from Switzerland to Asian countries. A significant volume of 33 tonnes of gold flowed from the Swiss vaults to the Middle-East region. Al other countries were busy supplying Switzerland with the precious yellow metal.

Physical gold flowing to Asia and the Middle-East

Based on these figures, we cannot trace whether there is a direct relationship between the gold flow from Switzerland to Asia and the gold flow from other countries to Switzerland. But given the fact that Switzerland is an important trading hub for gold globally, we can draw the conclusion that the flow of gold to the East is still strong.

United States

This trend is, to a certain extent, comparable with the '50s and '60s of the twentieth century. After WWII the United States were very powerful and had a strong export capacity. Europe still had to recover from WWII and paid off their debts to the United States with their large gold hoards. Af the war, the US managed to expand their gold reserve from 9.000 to approximately 24.000 tonnes. After peaking in 1958, the US gold hoard started dwindling again. European countries became net exporters and accumulated dollar reserves, which in turn were exchanged for physical gold. Most of this gold trade was done on paper, since the European gold was still in the vaults of the Federal Reserve. The US gold hoard was dwindling fast, once it became clear the US couldn't deliver on its promise to pay gold at a fixed exchange rate of $35 per troy ounce. In 1971, Nixon abandoned the link between the dollar and gold.

Now it looks like Asian is playing the role Europe played during the Bretton Woods system. First they accumulated dollar reserves by running a trade surplus with the US and Europe. Now they want value for their money and they started trading paper for gold. The question is: How will this end?

In the late fifties, many European countries redeemed gold from the US, now the metal is moving to Asia

10 juli 2014